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Prankster
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
727 Posts |
 Posted - 07/23/2006 : 1:35:00 PM
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Hi all, I know I haven't been around much lately (no doubt you wept openly) but I've been posting this in a few places and I wanted to get your reactions.
I recently came across this blog essay: [url]http://notthebeastmaster.typepad.com/weblog/2006/07/beating_a_dead_.html[/url]
I enjoyed Dead Men's Chest a great deal, but when I read this, I remembered that I, too, was more than a little stunned by how many racist elements were present. I too did a double take when all the dark-skinned crew members were killed off on the cannibal island, itself a problematic element of the film. I mean, I thought that Indan or Pakistani pirate was kind of cool, I was expecting him to stick around. I think there was one surviving black guy in Will's bone-cage, but as I recall he gets wiped out by the Kraken. I can't help but agree with the essay author's point about Tia Dalma, as well.
And of course he brings up King Kong which, too, was surprisingly straightforward in presenting racist stereotypes of islanders, plus (as he touches on) the whole idea of the original King Kong is crypto-racist to begin with; adding in a "good" black crew member doesn't really change all that.
When you combine that with the less overtly racist but still problematic LOTR flicks, and the somewhat notable lack of people of colour in most recent blockbusters, especially the comic book flicks, it does start to add up to a slightly creepy pattern. There are also rumours like the one about Tim Story wanting to make the Storms overtly latino in Fantastic Four, hence Alba's casting, but that aspect was toned down by nervous execs who were worried about fanboys kicking up a fuss--perhaps correctly, since there was quite a bit of resistance to Alba, even with her hair dyed blonde and no reference to her ethnicity.
It seems odd to flat-out say that "Hollywood is racist", which is obviously a silly generalization, but with recent developments like this, I wonder if the idea should at least be put back on the table. It's clearly a complex issue, but something seems to have gone wrong somewhere when stuff like the essay references is commonplace in blockbuster movies.
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Check out my online comics at [URL]http://www.phantasmictales.com[/URL]! |
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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 3:29:41 PM
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| My take is that when you see a mole hill, you should not put on lederhosen, grab a pick ax, rope and spiked boots and attempt to climb it. |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 3:30:20 PM
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Claims like this have been made concerning the media, especially in Bernard Goldberg's book "Bias", his tell-all on CBS and network television.
From what I can recall from reading it, he made the claim that during "sweeps week", tv news magazines featured NO stories involving black individuals. The kidnapping, drug abuse, child abuse, etc., etc. stories and interviews would all feature white subjects. The homeless people you are used to seeing and being accosted by for money are not the type of people the news teams go after when they want to do a story about homelessness. For that they go find the blond, blue eyed kids you never see.
Goldberg claimed, with source citations, that it was not incidental that there were no regular non-white cast members on "Friends" or "Seinfeld". Just occassional cameos and bit parts.
The reason given was that tv execs did not believe white, money-spending America would tune in unless white people were featured.
As tv and movies are just adjuncts of the same entertainment industry, I'm sure it bleeds over.
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LaFluff
Archdeacon of Jabootu
19 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 3:35:47 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Prankster
I recently came across this blog essay: [url]http://notthebeastmaster.typepad.com/weblog/2006/07/beating_a_dead_.html[/url]
I enjoyed Dead Men's Chest a great deal, but when I read this, I remembered that I, too, was more than a little stunned by how many racist elements were present.
Thank goodness. I noticed those elements in PotC IIh and thought 'I must be over sensitive and a 'PC' liberal, white, museli-wearing quiche-knitting fusspot. No-one else metioned it.'
I'm off to re-read it again before I write more. Cheers for that. |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 9:25:45 PM
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I have a simple reply to all of this....I just don't care anymore. I'm not even going to try and debate the particular points becuase it just doesn't matter. Has this author taken to task the scores of black-centric films where white people are stereotyped? How about the black comedians? I'm just not going to play the game anymore. The only way this whole multicultural situation is working at all is whites tend to be less race concious than blacks and hispanics. You have to give respect to get respect and personally, I'm not feeling guilty any longer. So, if someone wants to be offended, tough.
The ROPe gives you three options, convert, submit, or die. There is a fourth, resist. |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 10:02:35 PM
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| Come on, it is at least a little interesting if for no other reason than Hollywood and the television industry that cranks out product after product condemning America as racist and lacking in social justice doesn't really abide by it's own standards. |
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Kooshmeister
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
USA
104 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 12:37:17 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Prankster
And of course he brings up King Kong which, too, was surprisingly straightforward in presenting racist stereotypes of islanders, plus (as he touches on) the whole idea of the original King Kong is crypto-racist to begin with; adding in a "good" black crew member doesn't really change all that.
I actually kind of thought the 1976 movie was a little bit more progressive in this regard. That film's token black character Boan actually survives the log-tipping scene where all of the white crew members die, whereas Jackson's token black guy Hayes bites the big one in his film's version of that very scene.
In fact, whenever people bring up the idea of Hollywood racism and complain about the black guy(s) always dying, I always wonder why King Kong 1976 never gets a mention as one of the movies that (for all its faults) went against the norm and not only didn't kill off its sole black sailor first, but also spared him outright. |
Edited by - Kooshmeister on 07/24/2006 12:41:42 AM |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 01:00:04 AM
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There's nothing racially problematic about Lord of the Rings.
Racial divisions only evolve when whole populations are completely cut off from each other for tens of thousands of years (whites in Europe, blacks in Africa, etc.) With that in mind, let's take Tolkien's Middle Earth. Suppose Peter Jackson decided to be politically correct and said, "I'll make some of the hobbits black."
Umm, okay... but then where exactly did the black hobbits come from?
Is there some far-off continent (not mentioned in either LOTR or the Silmarilion) where black hobbits evolved for thousands of years, isolated from others of their kind, then one day for no particular reason said hobbits decided to leave their homeland and immigrate to the Shire (even though hobbits are notoriously adverse to travel)? Or maybe Shire hobbits long ago engaged in the slave trade, ensnaring poor defenseless black hobbits from a faraway land and dragging them back to the Shire to dig hobbit holes? Because that's what it would take to make Hobbiton look "more like America".
The same logical fallacy arises if you wanted to toss in a few Asian elves, or Latino dwarves.
As for the dearth of black characters in superhero films: yes, this does exist, but here I think you should blame the source material, not Hollywood. Peter Parker is white, so Toby McGwire gets the casting call, not Taye Diggs. Superman is white, so Mario Van Peebles need not check with his answering service. On the other hand, Blade is black, hence Wesley Snipes got to open up a can of whoop-*ss and not Cary Elwes. |
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Prankster
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
727 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 1:24:40 PM
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LOTR is racially problematic because all the non-white people are on the side of PURE EVIL. It's played down in the movie, but the "Asians" (Easterlings) and "Africans" (Southrons) are cannon fodder just as surely as the Orcs (who, by the way, are swarthy and slant-eyed in the books).
The problems with making an entire race, even a fictional one, "evil", are something that Tolkien grappled with late in life...I think he ended up deciding that orcs were robots, or something equally bizarre. But it was clearly something that had become philosophically vexing to him.
Terrhawk, no one is blaming you personally. You don't need to get offended.
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Check out my online comics at [URL]http://www.phantasmictales.com[/URL]! |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 3:12:17 PM
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Prankster, I wasn't saying that you were blaming me or anything. Sorry if I was unclear and you took it that way.
Zombiewhacker, nice points on LOTR.
The ROPe gives you three options, convert, submit, or die. There is a fourth, resist. |
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KurtVon
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
387 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 3:58:34 PM
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The LOtR situation is even more complex than that. Middle Earth isn't just a "place like medieval Europe", it's supposed to be an entirely different world. The maps in the books don't make it clear, but Middle Earth is actually an island on a flat "planet" with a dome sky that touches the ground at four points (NSEW). The places where it touches are where the differing "races" start, but even that isn't fair since they aren't "races" per say but individually created species.
I realize there is a lot of unintended racism in LOtR, but as I understood it, the appearances of the characters were pretty much chosen at whim, not with any planned relationship to the real "races" on Earth. It came from the environment in which it was written, not the opinions of its author.
And for the record, variation in humans is tiny. As a friend said, there is more variation in a single breed of dog than there is in all of humanity. Add to that the issue that, outside of Africa (despite variation appearing larger) there is actually less genetic variation than between even neighboring tribes inside Africa thanks to a bottleneck in the "great migration".
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Prankster
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
727 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 6:25:44 PM
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Ooooh, you don't wanna challenge me on LOTR knowledge! I'm worse than Stephen Colbert for that arcane stuff.
LOTR is very definitely supposed to be Earth, but Earth in a faraway, mythical time period. Tolkien mentions in the Silmarillion about how the Earth was made round by the Valar (gods) after the Numenoreans (Atlanteans, and the distant ancestors of Aragorn) made a vainglorious attempt to conquer the fabled Valhalla-like kingdom over the western sea. It was made so that when you sailed you'd always end up back where you started from, but the elves (who originated there--sort of, it's complicated) and the very rare individuals who proved their worth were allowed to sail west and end up in the Valars' kingdom. That's what happens to Bilbo, Galadriel, Elrond, and the rest at the end of the movie (and what Arwen deliberately turns down, leaving her trapped in Middle-Earth after all the elves had gone).
LOTR is designed to be like the mythology of the Norsemen, or the Greeks, or Celts, except it came out of Tolkien's head instead of evolving naturally over time. For that reason it's not surprising that it would focus on the "English" people and marginalize the other races, like most other mythologies do; it's a nation-building legend. The trouble is that there's some debate over whether nation-building legends are relevant in the modern age, or whether they can be actively dangerous. Certainly the Nazis proved you can really get carried away with that kind of thing. The authors of "The Neibelungenlied" and "The Iliad" had the excuse of living in ancient times; is it neccessarily right to resurrect outdated attitudes as something for the modern era? That's the question before us, and I think it's an important one that needs to be considered.
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Check out my online comics at [URL]http://www.phantasmictales.com[/URL]! |
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commodorejohn
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
76 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 7:56:06 PM
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Look, if you automatically assume that all members of a race in a piece of fiction are perfectly represented by those individuals or groups of them we are shown, of course it's going to look racist. We are never told in The Lord Of The Rings that the people groups from the far-off parts of Middle-Earth are inherently bad, just that the groups who have shown up for the book's plot (which, of course, is what one might naturally expect the book's text to be limited to) are working for Sauron and are (obviously) evil. And from what you find out about humanity in The Silmarillion, there's no reason to suspect that the rest of them are. As for the Orcs, they are evil as a race because they had their genesis in some poor elves that Morgoth screwed up beyond all recognition (which is why the Elves hate them so much.) I'd personally say that being descended from free-willed beings who got screwed up by the piece's Satan figure is a reasonably good explanation for their being evil.
In conclusion, leave LOTR alone and quit race-baiting.
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Who -are- the overlords of the UFO? |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 9:34:24 PM
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Asians? Africans? WTF? Mind showing me a screenshot from LOTR featuring black and Asian villains?
Also the Nazgul were all white guys. Saruman was white. Aragorn's corrupted ancestor was white. Wormtongue was white... really white... as in seasick-on-a-cruise white. And for the record, Treebeard and the other Ents were brown. Nyahhhh! |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2006 : 10:30:55 PM
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The Corsairs of Umbar and the Black Numenorians were white guys too.
The dudes on the oliphants were definitly giving off a Middle Eastern vibe, but I don't think that means anything.
If it does, then real life is operating from a racist script too. I would feel foolish making the claim that Israel's war against Hezbollah is racist because the members of Hezbollah are all Arabs. That is just the coincidence.
Remember that Tolkien is a product of the British Empire. The majority of England's wars in the Victorian Age consisted of British soldiers--always outnumbered--going up against native forces in the colonies. Since Europeans didn't colonize other European countries, the enemies or resistance was always "brown".
In a sense, it was a reflection of REALITY.
I notice it far more when Hollywood goes out of it's way to NOT mirror reality.
By far the biggest cop out and sell out in recent times was the movie "The Sum of All Fears", adapted from a Tom Clancy novel.
In the book, Arab terrorists find a misplaced Israeli nuclear bomb, remanufacture it and use it to blow up a football game in Colorado.
In the cowardly, stupid movie, the bomb plot was the work of Nazis in Europe trying to blame the whole thing on Arabs so as to spark a war that might destroy Israel.
Nazis? The only place these guys are a threat anymore is in drunken brawls at punk rock concerts in Germany or in Robert Ludlum novels.
I was completely disgusted with Clancy for selling out like that. |
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Prankster
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
727 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2006 : 02:32:39 AM
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Visually, in the movie, the Mumakil-riders are pretty clearly African or "tribal", and the Easterlings--the ones who Frodo and Sam see entering the black gates--wear costume that evokes middle eastern armour and arabic-style script. They are described in the book as sallow and/or swarthy.
In the book, Frodo and Sam catch a glimpse of a fallen Haradrim, or Southron, who is described as having brown skin and black hair and carrying a scimitar. Coupled with the fact that his people ride elephants, they're obviously meant to evoke either Africans or Indians. Tolkien also went into some detail about how the map of Middle-Earth would overlay the modern map of Europe; Minas Tirith would be somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, not far from Rome (on which it's pretty clearly modelled) and Harad would be somewhere in Africa or the Middle East.
Tolkien on Orcs: "...squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."
I want to stress that I don't think Tolkien was racist; in fact, for his time he was fairly enlightened. But he most definitely put a premium on the moral and philosophical dimensions of his writing; he *wanted* people to consider the ramifications of stuff like this, and as I said, it did come up in his own writing.
More importantly, I understand that there's an "in-story" explanation stating that the Orcs are evil, but the problem with that is that there are no actual "evil" races, and this smacks of real-world propaganda. The fact that it's directed at a mythical race only partly excuses it, because the impulse is the same. The more you start to think about creatures who are "born evil" and can supposedly be killed without remorse, the more problems you start to develop with it. Forget about racism for a moment, it's part of a larger pattern of disassociation in general. People are evil because of their actions, not because they wear black and sneer and look ugly. If nothing else, it's bad writing.
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Check out my online comics at [URL]http://www.phantasmictales.com[/URL]! |
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