this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Movies and TV Shows
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Having literally just black and beige white people isn't really diversity, and having white characters in stories and universes concieved of by white people seems to me like missing the point.
When I was growing up, there were lots of original stories with black people in them. There were cartoons, movies, variety shows, dramas, comedies, all about black neighborhoods and black families. There were superstar black actors who played black characters with regularity.
Compare today where instead of taking chances on letting people tell their own stories, the only way you can "include" minorities is to dip a white character in different strengths of tea and coffee.
I don't like it. I'm curious about the world, I want to hear music from all eras from around the world. I want to hear stories from all eras and all around the world. I want to understand how all different kinds of people think and see their values and understand how they push up against those values in the real world. Instead, we get a monoculture. Southern California and everything else is verboten.
Seems to be just another defence from the void of creativity that is today's Hollywood. Why not just tell good NEW stories from all cultures on earth? That is interesting. Not converting old and beloved stories to fit their false pandering - this is just another weird guilt trip to sell their lack of creative ideas.
Is it Hollywood's lack of creativity or is the audience's? There's a reason all but 2 of the top 10 grossing films last year were remakes/sequels/reboots. Hollywood isn't forcing anyone to see those movies, but those are the movies audiences consistently seem to choose.
While I love new stories and take time off work to see them every year at ViFF, in a culture where reboots reign supreme, we either change the moviegoing audience's demands/tastes dramatically OR just as we allow new actors to take on some of those iconic roles to which we flock (like say, Batman, Captain Picard etc) we don't restrict those actors to being the same ethnicity as the first actor was. One seems much more practical than the other.
Demanding that diversity only comes in new stories relegates diversity to the cultural scrap heap. While I wish we sought out new stories, for whatever reason, we want Marvel movie 732432 instead.
Yes this is also probably very true. the reboot of lion king made a billion and that says more about the audience than the filmmakers.
As a counterpoint, Hollywood and establishment media is losing relevance hourly. People are spending less time watching yet another remake/sequel/reboot, and they're spending a lot more time watching completely original content on youtube, or having discussions on reddit (or lemmy), or playing video games.
The argument you're making would have been more persuasive back when Hollywood had a virtual monopoly on creativity, but they've been eating their seed corn for so long it's having major long-term effects on the creative industry in America.
Japan is an interesting example of another way media could be done. There's a content pipeline in a lot of cases of webnovel to light novel to manga to anime to movie (and of course that's not the only thing that exists in the country but I'm a weeb so shut up), and it's having an outsized influence globally. The manga industry dwarfs the American comic book industry, and while there are remakes and sequels, it isn't the majority of the media coming out.
In the west, we've also seen some examples of hits from other countries that weren't based on anything else, such as squid game and parasyte out of Korea. There's also been some successes such as M3gan which made over 10 times its production budget.
Then there's stuff like indiegogo and patreon, where people are going out to directly fund indies because they're so hungry for something different.