Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

I have no idea what you are talking about. I am English. What the f is a yinz?

I think you have confused me for someone else but, Ok, bye

 

It's the Pittsburgh and area version of "y'all" or "you guys."

Sent from my SM-G390W using Tapatalk

 

I'm rather certain that is not what @Lucillalin wrote.

For clarity’s sake: are we talking about people in their home-countries here; first-/later-generations US citizens in Hollywood; a combination; or something else?
Just so no misunderstandings happen

Thanks, I was wondering the same.

 

Thanks for the clarification.

Now: can we ban it?

 

By "Uniquely obsessed with race" I mean that for Americans skin colour has been and is a point of identity and you lack the language/historical baggage/other tribalism compared to the rest of the world. If you have a Russian actor playing Ukrainian character for an example - they'd look the same to the Hollywood and audience, but theres layers and layers of things going on that make it just as complicated as a Chinese playing Japanese.
Aaaaand (my husband is from South East Asia so I know the finer points of their tribalisms- some race related, some not) ok, Chinese playing Japanese is another issue, but how about mainland Chinese playing, say, someone from Hong Kong? What if that actor supports China? Or other way around and Hollywood is trying to desperately (suck up to a dictatorship) sell to China?

Complicated. I'd say this is the decision for individual actors. There might be as many opinions as them.

(My husband has low interest on fandom debates as I mentioned elsewhere, but he likes seeing -any Asian -characters in Hollywood films, doesn't really care where they are from. He particularly likes them to have romance with white lady characters, as that is rather rare in films, but I bet this topic is super problematic too!)

 

Ahem.

 

Thank you! Yinz forget that the OP and mod is a Yinzer.

 

Coop's no mod. He's a space station.

 

I have heard tell that he is actually a website

 

Coop doesn't need a superlaser, he already has sarcasm

 

and being on the receiving end hurts even more. Case in point @AdmiralNick22

 

Pfft, Coop wishes he could hurt me. If anything, my incessant positivity and gregarious personality hurts him!

--Adm. Nick

 

I actually wouldn't dream of identifying as a yinzer (and I only use it sarcastically if ever) but y'know, representation and all that.

 

Lots of crosstalk -- of course some of this comes down to the actors' and creatives' choices, which sometimes get by and sometimes have a bit of blowback. My daughters, for instance, have soured on seeing Black Widow a bit because Scarlett Johansson has defended the whitewashed casting of Ghost in the Shell... people gotta live with the stuff they sign on for and say.

Really though this whole thing varies case by case, for lots of reasons, good and bad. White Americans and African Americans are (for totally different reasons) pretty much monolithically American and their more specific ethnic heritages don't matter much in casting beyond being either white or black. And historically white Americans, Brits, and Europeans can be interchangeably cast as long as they're skilled enough to pull off languages and accents (and we can all cite instances where actors have failed on that level pretty spectacularly). It'd be a pretty serious sea change if that stopped being the case.

East Asians are a different case for several reasons -- one being that they aren't assimilated monolithically in American society and remain largely separately Chinese-American, Korean-American, Japanese-American etc. with the language and cultural differences that implies. The other is that East Asian nations have hella big entertainment industries of their own that reflect those differences too, and produce works that travel pretty widely across the world so that general audiences are cognitive of those differences (just as they don't get confused as to whether they're driving through Chinatown or Little Tokyo). So it's probably never gonna stop looking weird and feeling "wrong" if they're cast interchangeably. Most of us are really conscious of this.

The same really by all rights should be true of differing African ethnicities and cultures, but so far it isn't because the "GA" just isn't a clued in to those differences; we don't see a lot of African-made media and we're quite accustomed to black actors being able to play any kind of African characters just as white actors can with anyone of European ancestry. I mean, the best known African nation in fictional media is probably the totally-made-up Wakanda. You wouldn't get that with East Asian cultures, I don't think, they'd just play as faux-China or faux-Japan depending on the casting.

(Really the only way any of this applies to SW is that closely related people seem to look plausibly ethnically related, so that a Space-Vietnamese character has a Space-Vietnamese sister, and a Space-Swede begets a family of essentially European-looking people. That's really just about it. Sometimes I wonder if the strange alt-right impression that SW is super-white comes from the fact that Lucas, who's very much not alt-right, pretty much had no choice in his casting of the prequel principals as they were either already established as white characters or were new characters who had to be the parents of established white characters; most of the brand-new characters were diversely cast and one established character even became Maori. Dunno.)

 

This is probably the only time I'm ever going to call representation a BAD thing in this thread.

 

Representation is fine if its done like intelligently and isnt done in a way that its all a character is there for like make them plot relevant all these people flocking to Star Wars because of Finn only to see him get sidelined and made irrelevant made me lmao. Thats why such a thing shouldnt be done for its own sake who is the character plan out their arc their personality their motives so on I find that to be a higher priority then what shade one is its secondary.

 

I don't really see Finn as secondary at all. He's a much more likable hero than Poe, whose character somehow slides backward from respectable dashing pilot dude to jerkish ex-drugrunner. Finn actually had a true hero's journey story going until the end of TROS where he was sort of left hanging. Again, I dunno why they didn't have him save a bunch of young recruits on one of those Exegol ships. That would have been cool and been a true completion to his story arc. And it's not even ridiculous since those ships were probably full of young recruits. Zorii even dropped the reference on Kijimi, which went nowhere.

 

There’s good reason to be skeptical of demonstrations of faux-wokeness in the entertainment industry, but calling into question the legitimacy of fans for “flocking to” your fandom because they are energized by the IP’s increasing diversification sounds pretty gatekeepy to me. As for responding to their supposed disappointment with mirth... well, that sure ain’t classy.

 

I find such a mindset as borderline fetisizing. It creeps me out, when people see someone like me I want to be seen as merely a man not an accessory or something for people to go "Wow cool black protag must buy" its poor investment in a story and a setup for disappointment if that's your sole interest in a story my guy. I'll agree to disagree

Even TLJ he was sorta rendered irrelevant tho, granted so was Rey in her own movie but thats another story

that fight on Salt Hoth was just him being emasculated out of a heroic sacrifice, I wouldn't even be mad if he died at that point lmao it was respectable then...shouting REY in the next movie constantly.

 

Emasculated, huh.

 

"salt hoth" would not have been a heroic sacrifice, it would not have worked, we are told that again and again. Finn just wants to take the easy way out there. It is a moment of weakness that he gets over.

 

Definitely --- and well-exemplified by Barnes and Noble's recent fiasco:

tl;dr: Barnes and Noble tried to celebrate Black History Month by celebrating white history and trying to sell it to people of colour. And apparently nobody in the boardroom thought it was a bad idea.

When I was still an active Wookieepedian, I always wanted to get something going for Black History Month --- when the Main Page's Featured Articles were set at two per week, totaling eight per month, I thought maybe we could feature eight black characters on the Main Page throughout February some year (and there were definitely enough black characters whose articles had been taken to Featured Status --- Moff Geist, Belindi Kalenda, Oron Jaeger, and Mermeia are a few that I can remember off the top of my head). Looking back now, it might have been a somewhat empty gesture, as it would have been promoting black characters written by white authors, and promoting the work of the few black SW authors there are would have been a better idea (Steven Barnes! I still want to read Lion's Blood). It's really a moot point, though, as by that time the Administration on the Wook was largely Tope and his cronies, who were often spouting uncomfortable Republican talking points in the Wook IRC chat, and saying things in the Senate Hall like "We shouldn't say that characters fell to the dark side because The Old Republic shows that it's a choice" and I honestly wonder if in 2020 those same people are attending alt-right rallies.

 

How is giving your life for others in the face of a looming defeat weak here?

Thats one hell of a jump in assumptions here my guy cool it with the attacks on personal character a bit. How is an argument over how the dark side works a republican talking point that is a sign of being alt right here can we like stay on topic here my guy?

 

It's not, but I get the sense that the quote in question is less related to the overall point than "who were often spouting uncomfortable Republican talking points in the Wook IRC chat" is. Which would actually be very related.

 

...why are you are assuming any of that is addressed to you? "Tope" refers to the username of a notoriously toxic Wookieepedian admin.

Also, holy ****, that is an idiotic marketing idea in Jeff's post. I can't even wrap my head around how little critical thought must have been involved there - it feels like a level way beyond just privilege.