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Black people in Spiderman 2

jcloudz

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i CAN see room for dissent. jamie has played in many crappy movies, these people want to see their fantasy come to life and be the best it can be. racism aside.

you want to talk black people, i think morgan freeman is an amazing actor who is far better of an actor than jamie. jamie is like just bieber or paris hilton to me.

morgan and anthony hopkins fall in a super high tier in terms of quality.
 

Bamboo

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Ok, well I already wrote a big reply to this and it got lost but I'll simmer down and rewrite a little something to not leave you totally in the wind.

All this is precisely why diverse media representation makes such a huge difference. Movies and TV make a huge difference in how we perceive other races (or minorities in general). If we see minorities in a variety of situations, everyday struggles, different characterisations etc they no longer appear 'other' and strange; they're just an ordinary human beings going about their business. You look at Grey's Anatomy for example, I believe they have a policy where they cast most roles (both recurring and bit parts) irrespective of race - the best person for the job gets it. And because there are so many minorities (more than one token black person, even!) you stop looking at characters based on race and just see them as the same, and feel equal amounts of empathy (ie. identification) for all the characters. This sort of approach can have such a positive affect on society, to slowly break down in-built bias, stereotypes and barriers to empathy.

It's funny in a way because I realized in places like Vermont that I possibly had more merely incidental contact with non-white people in a single 30 minute ride on the metro than some people have had in their entire lives. I think media representation can be a valuable step, but I still chafe at what I'll call "The Power Ranger Effect" where there is purposeful casting of 'tokens' to round out the crew. It's forced. I suppose it's ok for kids shows, but it just seems...false. I'm not familiar with Grey's but that sounds reasonable.

I'm from New Zealand and I have some family friends that did some travelling in the US. They're a couple in their 40s, one white and one is mixed race (part white, part Maori - native New Zealander). They were staying with some white, American friends (they were distantly related or something - but they were American born anyway), I think it was in Philadelphia. They were just having a look around the city by themselves and came back from a nice day out and told their friends about it. Their friends flipped their lid when they found they had gone to a "bad neighbourhood" (apparently code for "where black people live") - and they were then lectured about how dangerous it was. The couple couldn't understand it because they had met so many friendly people and hadn't found it tense or scary at all. Another time, the couple took a bus somewhere with the people they were staying with. The bus was semi-full and so the couple just took the first seats available. The guy sat next to a black woman and struck up a friendly conversation. They talked about his accent, where he's from, whether they were enjoying themselves in the US, what places they'd seen etc etc. When the couple got off at their stop, their American friends immediately flipped out and said how he wasn't being careful, and how he shouldn't talk to "those people".

Now NZ certainly isn't free of racism, but my friends were shocked at how casual and blatant it was in America. They couldn't believe that whites seemed to not even see blacks as people, or if they did, they saw them only as threatening. I know plenty of enlightened Americans, so I don't see this as representative of ALL Americans, but it does make you wonder about what the general level of prejudice is.

I grew up in the city proper and moved out to the suburbs later on. I recall taking trips into the city and people telling me how I was going to get shot, blah blah blah. There is a fair amount of prejudice. It's not always pervasive, and in some areas interracial couples and mixing seems fairly common.

Some cities are more racially divided than others. I don't think it's unfair to point out that predominately minority neighborhoods often are poorer and they might have more crime, but I think in practice people overestimate the level of danger in these areas. This isn't always a racialized thing, as I've had minorities give me looks all the same: "You went into little Haiti? Are you crazy?" It's just known as a bad area.

That said, it's damaging and wrong to view all lower class minorities as threats.
 

Southern Kross

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It's funny in a way because I realized in places like Vermont that I possibly had more merely incidental contact with non-white people in a single 30 minute ride on the metro than some people have had in their entire lives. I think media representation can be a valuable step, but I still chafe at what I'll call "The Power Ranger Effect" where there is purposeful casting of 'tokens' to round out the crew. It's forced. I suppose it's ok for kids shows, but it just seems...false. I'm not familiar with Grey's but that sounds reasonable.
Oh, the whole token casting is terrible. It's too self-conscious and even ordinary people (whom have no understanding of basic media critical theory) can see straight through it. It's totally counter-productive and creates the whole problem of the "burden of representation" - ie. one person forced to represent an entire minority and their behaviour will be scrutinised as evidence of behaviour of the whole.

Grey's Anatomy is just one example of how it can work well. I personally don't care much for it, but the Fast and Furious franchise is another great example that films with an ethnically diverse cast can be highly successful. These are significant because many studio executives need to be convinced (over and over) that diverse casting can actually make money before they will try it.

I grew up in the city proper and moved out to the suburbs later on. I recall taking trips into the city and people telling me how I was going to get shot, blah blah blah. There is a fair amount of prejudice. It's not always pervasive, and in some areas interracial couples and mixing seems fairly common.

Some cities are more racially divided than others. I don't think it's unfair to point out that predominately minority neighborhoods often are poorer and they might have more crime, but I think in practice people overestimate the level of danger in these areas. This isn't always a racialized thing, as I've had minorities give me looks all the same: "You went into little Haiti? Are you crazy?" It's just known as a bad area.

That said, it's damaging and wrong to view all lower class minorities as threats.
It's really ignorance that's the problem. Minorities are going to seem threatening because the majority is often segregated from them. That way the majority can make up negative stereotypes about the minority without those false ideas ever being challenged.

I backpacked around Egypt (pre-revolution) and when I was leaving, I splashed out on a ticket on "the sleeping train" (basically a train with cabins and beds, which was a lot more expensive than the regular one) back to Cairo. I shared my cabin with a Australian woman in her 50s, who had been travelling for 2-3 weeks as part of tour group. We were talking about our experiences of the country, which were very different. Egypt can be a hard place to travel in because tourists just get bombarded (people wanting baksheesh (bribes/tips), people wanting to sell you things etc). Additionally the men can be prone to sexually harrass you if you are young woman travelling alone (Not ALL men - not even most men. But I did have a few negative experiences). But it wasn't unsafe and most people were decent, even if they were annoying to tourists. However, this Australian woman had been in one of these tour groups that are like a bubble - they allow you to experience the country without actually engaging in the culture, people, food, environment etc. She was kept separate from the people and had all these highly inaccurate ideas about them. Her tour guide had told her group that it was so dangerous to get separated from the group because all these terrible things would happen to you. She and another person did get separated accidentally and she told me this whole ridiculously panicky story about how frightening it had been. I tried to tell her that it is a pretty safe country for the most part; that I had been travelling for weeks there and had walked around by myself all the time (even at night), and it was fine. But she wouldn't listen. She went on about Egyptians and Arabs in general in a way that was so incredibly racist, inaccurate and unfair that I was disgusted. I don't even know why she went there if she felt that negatively towards them. I would be seriously insulted to discover if tourists came to my country and were that repulsed by NZers, even before they arrived there. But people will go out of their way to segregate themselves from other races and cultures, even when travelling in another country. And it's easy to keep believing that racist BS, if you never let yourself see the other side of the story, if you never allow yourself to be confronted with the truth. :dont:
 

Bamboo

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Oh, the whole token casting is terrible. It's too self-conscious and even ordinary people (whom have no understanding of basic media critical theory) can see straight through it. It's totally counter-productive and creates the whole problem of the "burden of representation" - ie. one person forced to represent an entire minority and their behaviour will be scrutinised as evidence of behaviour of the whole.

Ah! Yes that's exactly it! "Burden of representation", i like that terminology.

Grey's Anatomy is just one example of how it can work well. I personally don't care much for it, but the Fast and Furious franchise is another great example that films with an ethnically diverse cast can be highly successful. These are significant because many studio executives need to be convinced (over and over) that diverse casting can actually make money before they will try it.[/quote]

Yeah, I suppose F&F was pretty diverse (at least the first one, I don't recall the rest).

I'm not really sure why casting would think that racial diversity would be bad for business where it doesn't impact the story, except that if you want to cast a "big name" then you probably have more white choices than other choices.

Even if some people are going to complain about Electro, I seriously doubt this will effect ticket sales in any real way.

It's really ignorance that's the problem. Minorities are going to seem threatening because the majority is often segregated from them. That way the majority can make up negative stereotypes about the minority without those false ideas ever being challenged.

I backpacked around Egypt (pre-revolution) and when I was leaving, I splashed out on a ticket on "the sleeping train" (basically a train with cabins and beds, which was a lot more expensive than the regular one) back to Cairo. I shared my cabin with a Australian woman in her 50s, who had been travelling for 2-3 weeks as part of tour group. We were talking about our experiences of the country, which were very different. Egypt can be a hard place to travel in because tourists just get bombarded (people wanting baksheesh (bribes/tips), people wanting to sell you things etc). Additionally the men can be prone to sexually harrass you if you are young woman travelling alone (Not ALL men - not even most men. But I did have a few negative experiences). But it wasn't unsafe and most people were decent, even if they were annoying to tourists. However, this Australian woman had been in one of these tour groups that are like a bubble - they allow you to experience the country without actually engaging in the culture, people, food, environment etc. She was kept separate from the people and had all these highly inaccurate ideas about them. Her tour guide had told her group that it was so dangerous to get separated from the group because all these terrible things would happen to you. She and another person did get separated accidentally and she told me this whole ridiculously panicky story about how frightening it had been. I tried to tell her that it is a pretty safe country for the most part; that I had been travelling for weeks there and had walked around by myself all the time (even at night), and it was fine. But she wouldn't listen. She went on about Egyptians and Arabs in general in a way that was so incredibly racist, inaccurate and unfair that I was disgusted. I don't even know why she went there if she felt that negatively towards them. I would be seriously insulted to discover if tourists came to my country and were that repulsed by NZers, even before they arrived there. But people will go out of their way to segregate themselves from other races and cultures, even when travelling in another country. And it's easy to keep believing that racist BS, if you never let yourself see the other side of the story, if you never allow yourself to be confronted with the truth. :dont:

Yeah, I've been on group trips before (Israel), they can have a very shut in mentality. Luckily the trip I was on was fairly open about letting you wander around on your own. In some cases it's hard not to be a tourist but I try to try out the local flavor wherever I go. I tend to travel to nice places sure but also places that are kinda odd, off the path, run down, or have a not very good reputation. You get a much more interesting experience than just going to the tourist spots and taking the same photo's as everyone else and then leaving. My best stories tend to revolve around actually meeting people in unknown places and getting into novel situations. And even if it's not much of a story, that French speaking barber in Little Haiti gave a great haircut.
 

Southern Kross

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I'm not really sure why casting would think that racial diversity would be bad for business where it doesn't impact the story, except that if you want to cast a "big name" then you probably have more white choices than other choices.
Studio execs tend to believe a whole bunch of idiotic myths about what audiences will and won't like, and they're too skittish to go against the norms that have worked in the past. Race is just one of those elements. The way women are represented on film/TV is also hugely influenced by the ignorance and paranoia of executives.
 

Totenkindly

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187891.jpg


Rhino, before his operation to correct being a "rhino trapped in a thug's body."
 

The Ü™

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Speaking of PC Spider-Man, let's look at what closet homo Andrew Garfield has to say about the character. And the studio may just be afraid enough of the public to give into these suggestions.

See what happens when we start tolerating ass pirates? Rather than make their own comic book fairy tales, they try to convert everyone and everything! One day, it's gonna be very un-PC to be straight.

How soon we forget Joel Schumacher's little 1997 masterpiece.
 

Bamboo

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Studio execs tend to believe a whole bunch of idiotic myths about what audiences will and won't like, and they're too skittish to go against the norms that have worked in the past. Race is just one of those elements. The way women are represented on film/TV is also hugely influenced by the ignorance and paranoia of executives.

I don't doubt there is some element of racism/gender bias involved, but now that I think about it, movies are made to: make money.

How do you guarantee you'll make money? Follow the same formula. I mean look at how Beverly Hills Cop inspired a whole list of buddy cop movies.

I agree, there is ignorance, but there is also just laziness and meeting consumer demand. Why make something new, why take a risk? Follow the formula. But there's a sort of complicit racism that can be built into that.
 

Totenkindly

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Speaking of PC Spider-Man, let's look at what closet homo Andrew Garfield has to say about the character. And the studio may just be afraid enough of the public to give into these suggestions.

See what happens when we start tolerating ass pirates? Rather than make their own comic book fairy tales, they try to convert everyone and everything! One day, it's gonna be very un-PC to be straight.

How soon we forget Joel Schumacher's little 1997 masterpiece.

Oh horrors! They're out to take over the world!!!

First Spiderman.

Then Northstar.

Then Apollo and Midnighter shall be converted.

Who might be next?
 

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