ST Why I think TFA is going to resonate with a lot of young people (and do very well)

I would respond to some of these pots, but I need to go have a funeral for the brain cells that just died reading them.

 

That is part of the Master Plan. Do not succumb! lol

 

I wouldn't say it was political so much as a better reflection of the audience. Good storytellers know their audience. Lucas did that too. We saw more women and people of color as the saga continued.

 

He also said "strange magic" was star wars for girls (gah). Not so sure how much insight is in the PT as a response to criticism.

 

If you knew anything about the history of warfare and military action in modern democracies (including the US) you would find that it is civilian entities, not the military, that overwhelmingly advocate for military intervention as a means of resolving events that could harm national security and/ or key national interests. For example, the recent military intervention in Libya, sanctioned by a UNSC resolution, was fiercely opposed by the US Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (who feared overstretch on what they considered a non-essential mission), while fiercely supported by the Secretary of State and the Ambassador to the UN, on humanitarian grounds. In other words, your caricature of the US military is exactly that: a caricature. The institution is usually responding to views propagated by civilians (unless your historical memory begins and ends with the Vietnam War).

Personally, as a liberal, I think there is such thing as a "just war," - one that meets strict criteria. I believe there are times and places where military interventions designed to advance liberalism (halt genocide such as in Bosnia and during WWII), prevent authoritarian states from violating the territorial integrity of other free states (WWII and The Gulf War), and prevent autocratic entities that threaten international security from thriving (such as most recently with the Taliban government in Afghanistan), are justified on liberal grounds.

In this context, your injection of a very narrow and uninformed viewpoint about the use of military force, as a means of objecting to the appearance of a black soldier in TFA, stinks of fringe, tinfoil hat nonsense.

The warfare of the Rebel Alliance, I suspect, will be reasonably portrayed as a just war implemented by good-intentioned soldiers. Though I suspect that moral quandaries will be raised that complicate the picture, and cause some rebels to question some of the less savory means they are using to achieve a just end.

 

I am so happy this guy isn't really Ken Wannberg.

 

The news is good and bad. While Elvis sightings have decreased, UFO sightings have increased lately. So either the little green guy has become more active, or the government has stopped suppression of the real sightings.

 

I think some people in this thread may be conflating equal representation with equal opportunity. If a group is a minority, they are simply, mathematically, unlikely to be represented in the media as much as the majority. There are less of them auditioning and working, so naturally there are going to be less of them on screen. Equal representation is impossible without discrimination. Equal opportunity is not. If a role does not require someone to be of a certain race or gender, then ideally these elements should not factor into casting the role. If you set up in your mind that this character will be latino, this character will be black, this character will be asian, when there's no artistic need for them to be so, and you're going to open these roles up as job positions, then you are discriminating. All it means when we see a movie with diversity is that the casting was not biased towards white males. It's in no way an indicator that it's progressive in the sense that race/gender biases played no factor whatsever.

 

That's what Youtube on the PS4 is for. At least in my house.

Right. Plus, anybody want to talk about how the first black main character (big 3 level) in Star Wars is a stormtrooper? I mean, these guys are considered lower than low in the Star Wars universe. I know people roleplay as the 501st, but they're not holding them up as heroes. They're still considered lower than pondscum in-universe. Not exactly a glowing first impression. Wouldn't it be a more positive representation of minorities if he started out as a good guy? What if he started out as a gangster, but left because of attrocities. Seems race tropey to me. At least clones had no choice.

 

I think your ending thoughts raise a really good pound, and if I may be open, I need to work at wrestling with st times. Culture has made it hard not to treat someone of a different race a certain way based off of how they look even if that action is intended to be positive.

It was easier when I was a teenager. We celebrated each others cultures. When you gave a comment of praise you knew it was because the person had that great quality, and when someone was called out on something you knew it was because they were legitimately being a jerk.

It often feels like the world pushes us to acknowledge the skin color first and be a driving factor on how we behave towards a person when reality all I want t know is what the person is like, and what kind of character do they have.

Sorry if that whole rant felt way off topic.

 

OK, but to be fair, we can't assume reverse racism any more than we can assume racism. A movie with diversity that is representative of the general population is more likely to be progressive and equal opportunity, whether or not that is actually the case (based on probabilities alone if we don't know for sure). Mathematically, African Americans make up about 1 in 5 in the population, and there certainly aren't more than that in SW movies.

I agree that there is a lot of political correctness that is stupid and over the top, and that there are a fair amount of situations that are unfair because of reverse racism (or just racial bias against the majority or male gender if you don't like that phrase). However, certainly it would be ridiculous to imply that those situation are a bigger problem in the overall picture than actual sexism/racism against women and minorities, even in modern day America. It is still a lot more likely that a white guy gets a role over a black guy unfairly than the other way around. Given the talent level and reasonable number of minority actors in TFA, I think it is pretty safe to say they earned there roles, and no injustice was done to men and whites.

 

I would say your argument supports the idea that whatever bias or PC thought might have gone into casting TFA, it's not as great of a problem in the overall picture as racial/gender prejudice going into the casting. I'm certainly open to this idea. Social prejudices change over time and acting on a minor form of discrimination probably does more to diminish a major form of discrimination over a shorter period of time. It's quicker, easier. But there must also be voices that advocate the ideal, which is the disavowal of discrimination altogether. It will never be perfectly so, as we are all but human. But we can progress more and more toward it and refine our attitudes to create more opportunities.

 

I think this thread has gone over the falls.....

 

Right, while equal opportunity and equal representation are not the same, there is a strong correlation between the 2. Giving equal opportunity has a way of leading to equal representation.

 

I certainly wouldn't disagree with that, though it would be somewhat hard to prove. Even if that's not the case, equal opportunity has it's own value. I'm not a big fan of optics. I think inordinate concern with optics does more harm than good in the long run.

 

It actually would be easy to prove in a general way. As far as proving it in Hollywood, it would get kind of sticky because everything is so "behind the scenes." But most anywhere else, you could easily statistically correlate the fact that giving a diverse group more opportunity would lead to more equal representation (in general of course, it isn't going to happen that way in every case, and the equality is mostly not going to be absolute or perfect).

 

I guess it depends on if we are both talking about the same thing when we say "equal representation". When I say it I mean a more or less equal amount of all races within the work place or performing jobs of equal significance. I don't mean an accurate population representation. For example, the company I work for employs roughly 200 people. There are around 3 or 4 black people who work there. That's a fairly accurate percentage representation of the black population in the area. I would just call that an accurate cross-section or something. But if that's what you mean by equal representation, then yes, equal opportunity should lead directly to it.

 

Maybe, but i really doubt it. And have we seen an "inordinate" concern for optics? I don't think so. No fan i know expressed even an overt acknowledgement that Finn is black, or that Rey looks to be an action character. When I heard some people were upset that Finn is black, I was flabbergasted.

 

I suspect that was flame bait. I know some people got their panties in a bundle over the fact that there was a non-clone stormtrooper, but they just needed to be quickly educated on the Empire's recruitment policy. No fan I know ever expressed any concern over a stormtrooper being black. Lots of people I know "heard" this was true, but I've yet to come across an example. As for inordinate concern for optics, I would say the OP might be veering into that a little. Supposing more social value in the fact of TFA's adversity than may actually be the case. My only point being that as long as we have equal opportunity, it shouldn't really matter what the results end up being.

 

Yes, I was talking about representation proportionally in terms of the population makeup. That was why I gave the 1 in 5 example for African-Americans in the US.

Expecting equal percentages of all races would not remotely fit even the lamest logic. I don't think that is what anyone meant; at least I hope not.

There was actually a Twitter controversy right when the first trailer came out where some people were saying there shouldn't be a black stormtrooper. The actor himself publically responded to it; I think that is what he is talking about. I'm sure it wasn't a lot of people though; a few idiots on Twitter saying something stupid can be blown up into a "controversy."

 

Sigh.... I wasn't going to post here anymore and I only came onto the site today to follow up on some interesting info I wanted to share with starocean90 in another thread but in @KenW's defence, yes there have been numerous books on this subject. Yes, Hollywood studios, including Disney, are very much involved in the generation of propaganda. Here are links to some books on the subject, all of which have good reviews on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Hol...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hollywood...d_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=06NJDJ5TPTSN4CXN2TY8

http://www.amazon.com/The-CIA-Holly...d_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=06NJDJ5TPTSN4CXN2TY8

 

*puts on tin foil hat* Get back on topic in here, please.

 

Sorry, Echo. Those are "popular" books that have absolutely no credibility from either an academic perspective (certainly no peer review involved) or from the perspective of policy professionals who know the ins and outs of the DOD. The excerpts I have read are the product of two problematic issues: 1) the selection of isolated bits of information, most from the Cold War era, to make the case for a broad, well-orchestrated conspiracy; 2) the application of Cold War DOD practices to present DOD practices. Truth is, the institution has changed considerably since the USSR collapsed. The idea that DOD has any power to censor films is, from both a scholarly and a professional perspective (speaking for myself) absolutely absurd.

Broaden your sources, and then perhaps a conversation can be had.

 

".....at that point, we would strategically insert several minorities into Star Wars, then....."

 

I heard the media doesn't use minorities to further the agenda of white rich men.