"Can We Make the Villain a White Guy?"(hollywoodgadfly.substack.com) |
"Can We Make the Villain a White Guy?"(hollywoodgadfly.substack.com) |
Also, I think narrative is not the main issue with recent blockbusters. Their issues is dedramatization and impersonal stakes, which makes them weaker than movies from 20-30 years ago. I think A24 studio and the Daniels showed you can be goofy and fun while still making the audience care and even cry a bit, so this is probably a skill issue.
Like going back to the early 90’s there was this incredible rash of bad films, especially action movies, and that was just the nature of Hollywood incentives.
Because I think the complaint in some sense isn’t the fact that there are progressive movies, it’s the fact that it’s a layer added to all low risk big budget studio films.
But these movies would likely be bad for other identifiable reasons if not for the sprinkling of diversity. The lord of the rings on Amazon isn’t otherwise great.
So sometimes I think this criticism is just feeding into the very thing it’s trying to fight. Industry is great, and it’s great for the reasons described, but I think the moral ambiguity problem as described isn’t caused by diversity, they’re correlated. Bad movies have less moral ambiguity and use diversity in a hamfisted way.
That really underscores how bad the author’s “drama requires moral ambiguity” argument is. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power did everything it could to inject moral ambiguity into a very unambiguous text—Galadriel is now an obsessive that disregards the cost of her vengeance, Halbrand presents as a possible Aragorn ancestor, Adar is just trying to redeem the Uruk, etc.—but all of it falls flat, none of the reveals land (“I am good!”), and the end result is simply narm. The casting of Arondir and Disa hardly makes a difference in the light of all these writing flaws.
It's as childish as the older pure-good vs. pure-evil stories, except that instead of being satisfying in a simple sort of way it's just annoying and bad storytelling.
It feels worse because it's a mindless, careless addition to check the "diversity" box. If it was made with effort it wouldn't feel this way.
The protagonist is merely the main character, while the antagonist is the person or group standing in their way.
There are many stories where the protagonist is evil/bad. Like I hope people don't think Walter White was good, while ASAC Schrader was bad.
And FWIW, while the pendulum went far into the "all non-whites are morally superior", just a couple of decades earlier minorities were almost always the bad guy. Like in the 80s an Arab or clearly Muslim character = terrorist. It was a lazy shortcut, just like the current waning "put in a black woman and she'll be superior to everyone" thing is a lazy shortcut.
Give Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Korean, British, Japanese, Hongkonger, Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai, etc films are try. If you're like me, you'll be delighted with the change of pace and focus on more human-centered stories and grounded portrayals of characters and relationships.
American cinema feels so uncanny and sterile by comparison.
It's not easy to find, but Cannes awards is a good start.
I'm 47 and no it is not.
There is a spiritual successor to The Wire: 2022’s miniseries We Own This City. Same complicated representation of Baltimore. Same complicated representation of American policing. Good critical reception, but less widely-known than a legendary show that ran for six years and sixty episodes.
The substantive difference between the two is that 2020’s-era HBO doesn’t make long-running serials like The Wire and The Sopranos anymore (Hacks is a notable exception).
That’s not a political change forced on them by unnamed leftists. That’s a change in business model.
1. Succession
2. Curb you Enthusiasm
3. Westworld
4. Euporia
5. The White Lotus
6. The Last of Us
7. House of the Dragon
8. Industry
And those French gangster movies where the Turkish guy is the cool villain eroding lawful civic French values.
I find it refreshing when a plot is balanced with a white guy antagonist undermining the lawful order.
Whatever you think feel or believe, evil lurks within every kind of person. Our entertainment would reflect this as all forms of art imitate life.
I never did look up if I'd watch an international version, and whether the US release was different, but pandering was quite surprising.
What time period do you feel that took place?
It's very over-the-top, and very preachy. Once you notice it, it's impossible to stop noticing. "Did you know that people who look like you are bad, and stupid, and laughable, and that people who look different are good, and also you're bad. Did you know you're bad?" I'm sure people are going to issue with that characterization, but it really is everywhere these days, and has been for well over a decade. Are there counter-examples? Yes, but this is really getting tiring.
I claim it has an outsized effect since it doesn't _really_ matter who is represented in movies or TV. If I'm represented poorly in television, it doesn't really have bearing on things that matter; my political rights, my socioeconomic standing, my job prospects, access to health care, etc. But it does push that little tribal button in people's heads. It's lobbing a tribalism grenade. It's hard to ignore, hard not be aggrieved about, etc. Does this mean I am oppressed? No, certainly not. oppression is not people expressing opinions. But damned if it's not annoying and alienating.
And so, for very, very little benefit (ie, representation of ideology in movies) people are fanning the flames of tribalism nearly as aggressively as they can get away with. It's just one more thing inflaming tribal impulses today.
For my part, I really don't watch movies or TV for the most part anymore. I was disappointed, offended, or annoyed too many times and I now I just assume a movie is going to be trash unless it can demonstrate otherwise. Really they have probably done me a favor. I'm just trying to read books as my default leisure.
Like, they show Giancarlo Esposito from Breaking Bad, saying what a good villain he was. And then they imply it can't happen again. But he was another fantastic villain in The Boys, which just ended its run.
> It means that if a black woman in a wheelchair shows up, you know exactly what role she’ll play; the supportive best friend, but never the lying, betraying femme fatale.
Maybe, but the real source of this is: black women in wheelchairs rarely get any parts at all.
Maybe I don't watch enough movies, but I don't think this page makes a good enough case that it's actually happening. As it is, it reads like something they thought up to get angry about.
i have no idea if this is relevant to the article or not
And we have this underlying assumption that no one of the left has ever wanted this sort of representation, is just a massive straw-man for this entire argument.
The original comment obviously did in fact try to make a point about heterosexual white men in general. No mention was made of how few there might be, you're in fact the one interjecting new content from somewhere.
"Who has all the power in the real world?"
If the answer in reality is a few white men have most of the power, how can you insist that they are claiming all white men have the power?
Whether they believe it not, there is no specific point about "heterosexual white men in general". These are your words and do not appear anywhere in their comment.