Is there ever a time when Hollywood is not FAILing? First up, What these people need is a honky syndrome goes off planet in:
James Cameron’s Avatar
Lawd ha’ mercy internets. Lord ha mercy. Because Hollywood sure as hell won’t. You know, a lot of those bullshit tropes that show up in movies like this are based on some real inaccurate history. If you haven’t read it yet, may I rec 1491? You’ll find that it goes a good way in clearing some of the…um…cobwebs.
Meantime: Universal’s UK ‘Couples Retreat’ Poster Brings Cries of Racism by Removing Black Actors
The excuse was rather amusing, I must say.
While all this is going on, however, Heroes writers decided to show their asses in a very public manner.
White men, you see, are totes oppressed in Hollywood. Oh yeah!
It all started when Jim Martin (assistant to show creator Tim Kring and himself a writer on the show) engaged in conversation with (former, now disgruntled) fans about the show, and in the process uttered such gems as “Anyone who thinks they can do better… I dare you. Go ahead. :) I’d love to see it.” and “If you think that Racism and Sexism are thematically integrated in HEROES then you may want to check your intelligence before worrying about it being insulted.” That post has since been deleted, but a kind mouse saved it and shared it with us in wank_report. In his follow-up post about the whole mess, he whined about how he liked the internet better when it wasn’t so self-righteous, and left us with even more gems as “Look up the diversity programs for writers in tv. Ask anyone in the tv world. There is a distinct disadvantage to be a white male when trying to be a staff writer.” and “I’m fully aware of what you are referencing, but I don’t think its a problem on Heroes and I don’t think white privilege is an issue in Hollywood at this point.”
Sounds bad enough, right?
But no! Turns out that was just the start of a downwards spiral of fail, and it turns out that the fail reached new startling depths when Foz McDermott, a coordinating producer and writer of the show and perpetual bringer of anti-PC and misogyny fail, decided to use his own blog to reply to a particular comment that was left on Jim Martin’s blog. He starts charmingly:
“The idea that white privilege isn’t a problem in Hollywood at this point is an idea coming from a privileged standpoint.”
Holy crap lady… if you are indeed a lady… that is hilarious. In a business that is scared of and run by pussy organizations that are so scared of being sued about everything, being OVERLY PC is the actual problem. Being a white male in the business of Hollywood is NOT easy. There are programs and incentives to help everyone except white males.MORE
Well. If you were wondering why Heroes sucks… There’s your answer.
And then there’s the prospect of 2013, a television show spin off from the headache inducing 2012.
Let me get this straight. Africa and other points of interest were colonized and exploited. This thieving allowed the exploiting countries to get rich. These riches allowed them to save a portion of their own population, mostly middle class to upper class and (white). Poor people, especially POC, were left to drown. Now, they have come to recolonize Africa. Which didn’t drown after all but simply went up in the air 1000 feet? Does this strike anyone else as chock full to bursting with the potential for FAIL to the nth degree?
Finally Britain’s film industry does its share of FAILing too.
*sigh* Maybe if I go to bed I’ll wake up and find that this was all a bad dream?
Linkspam Hollywood FAIL edition
I noticed the Couples Retreat posters in London and was disgusted but not surprised. Some larger posters do show the black couple, but they’re as far in the distance as on the American poster shown–which is scarcely better.
As a sidebar – I don’t watch these shows or watch very many movies in particular, so I can’t follow the thread much. However, I bought 1491 a couple of years ago and found it tremendously interesting. So I’m interested to hear that you found the book of value enough to cite as an informative resource. If you want me to take this to an open thread that would be fine, but I’d be interested in any further comments you have on the book.
“And then there’s the prospect of 2013…Does this strike anyone else as chock full to bursting with the potential for FAIL to the nth degree?”
It *embodies* fail.
I mean, not that I should be surprised by now or anything, but…seriously, do these people *honestly* not get it? On a very fundamental level, I do not understand this…denial? Obliviousness? Cynical awareness that the target audience will Not Get It and so it’s okay to repeat the colonization of Africa in pursuit of $$$?
Assuming that we agree that the underlying Avatar storyline would be deeply offensive if the aliens were literally NAs, how far away from humanity does a filmmaker need to go to avoid that?
It seems apparent to me that the “other culture with differing skills and ways” or the “fall in love with enemy warrior” thing are memes which have been applied in a lot of problematic ways but also a lot of nonproblematic ways. Can it be true that Avatar–in which the role of “stereotyped NA” is played by 10 foot tall aliens–is objectionable in the same way that it would be if the role was actually representing NAs?
Such a succinct, but HORRIBLE example, the cartoon ‘The Last Avatar’ — my kids saw who the actors were going to be for it, and they didn’t know who the heck they were! And both refuse to watch it because these (white) actors weren’t the characters they grew to love! At the ages of 7 and 9, going to a multi racial school where class isn’t much of an issue, they don’t understand, and I don’t know how to explain it to them. Just like I didn’t know how to explain why they couldn’t go see Bay’s Transformers, because it was so absurdly racist and sexist. I admit that I’m really, truly tired of not seeing MY world reflected in what I watch. I’m tired of seeing white men or boys the heroes of EVERY thing. THEY have lives, the rest of us are background props. And the excuse ‘it sells’ that, while it may be true, its because that seems to be ALL there IS. Why IS it that in every movie, from ‘Armageddon’ to ‘2012’ to ‘War of the Worlds’ to ‘Transformers’, its always a WHITE GUY saving the universe and the kids? When they came out with ‘Aliens’, the lower class not barbie doll Ellen Ripley did a HELL of a good job saving the kid, and made a LOT of money doing it. Its sad that instead of facing up to people trying to CORRECT this imbalance, the Hollywood boy’s club just whines as if to justify their obvious bias and continue it without interruption.
Tessombra – if you want all that to change, show Hollywood how making that change won’t risk their profits. They’re in business to make money. Social messages are a secondary issue to them.
BTW: with regards to the significance of 2012, this article from Sky and Telescope gives a pretty good treatment of how it’s a mis-appropriation of Mayan culture. The Mayans themselves never represented it as a date of Armageddon. It happens that I subscribe to the magazine (the astrophotography alone is worth the cost) and read it last month.
BTW, with regards to 2012, this article from Sky and Telescope explains what is happening in the Mayan calendar then and how this is a complete misrepresentation of Mayan culture. They never predicted that Armageddon would happen on that date. It happens that I subscribe to the magazine (the astrophotography alone is worth the money) and read it last month.
RonF, if they were guided solely by profit motive, they’d most likely make more by appealing to more audiences. They’re guided by profit, sure, but they’re ALSO guided by racism and sexism.
On the subject of 2012, and given that this is a linkspam, and that my site manager says I should really try linking more, I can offer this pre-take on the movie. Anyone who’s seen the film able to say how accurate the predictions were?
Also, in an unrelated spam, here’s a really cool 3:31 minute short: The Cat With Hands.
Those movies (some of which I think are reasonably good when considered on their own) wouldn’t be so annoying if there was a more diverse set of writers and decision makers in Hollywood, and there were more films written from the point of view of non-whiteguys. Not to defend them, but what are the writers going to do? If they write from points of view they don’t share, wouldn’t many people consider that to be appropriation?
The question is, how can Hollywood become more diverse?
PLAYBOY: Sigourney Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley in your film Alien is a powerful sex icon, and you may have created another in Avatar with a barely dressed, blue-skinned, 10-foot-tall warrior who fiercely defends herself and the creatures of her planet. Even without state-of-the-art special effects, Zoe Saldana—who voices and models the character for CG morphing—is hot.
CAMERON: Let’s be clear. There is a classification above hot, which is “smoking hot.” She is smoking hot.
PLAYBOY: So Saldana’s character was specifically designed to appeal to guys’ ids?
CAMERON: And they won’t be able to control themselves. They will have actual lust for a character that consists of pixels of ones and zeros. You’re never going to meet her, and if you did, she’s 10 feet tall and would snap your spine. The point is, 99.9 percent of people aren’t going to meet any of the movie actresses they fall in love with, so it doesn’t matter if it’s Neytiri or Michelle Pfeiffer.
PLAYBOY: We seem to need fantasy icons like Lara Croft and Wonder Woman, despite knowing they mess with our heads.
CAMERON: Most of men’s problems with women probably have to do with realizing women are real and most of them don’t look or act like Vampirella. A big recalibration happens when we’re forced to deal with real women, and there’s a certain geek population that would much rather deal with fantasy women than real women. Let’s face it: Real women are complicated. You can try your whole life and not understand them.
PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine’s hotness?
CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, “She’s got to have tits,” even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na’vi, aren’t placental mammals. I designed her costumes based on a taparrabo, a loincloth thing worn by Mayan Indians. We go to another planet in this movie, so it would be stupid if she ran around in a Brazilian thong or a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. [Don’t ya just LURVE this part? I mean, the Mayans aren’t part of earth now? Or does he think they have all died off so its cool rip them off for his rather Native Americanesque aliens?]
PLAYBOY: Are her breasts on view?
CAMERON: I came up with this free—floating, lion’s-mane—like array of feathers, and we strategically lit and angled shots to not draw attention to her breasts, but they’re right there. The animation uses a physics-based sim that takes into consideration gravity, air movement and the momentum of her hair, her top. We had a shot in which Neytiri falls into a specific position, and because she is lit by orange firelight, it lights up the nipples. That was good, except we’re going for a PG-13 rating, so we wound up having to fix it. We’ll have to put it on the special edition DVD; it will be a collector’s item. A Neytiri Playboy Centerfold would have been a good idea.MORE
Women are not supposed to watch this thing, apparently? How fucking skeevy it is in the face of the history and ever present use of rape as a tool of war, how fucking assholish is his attitude of “oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh gotta have breasts! Must have fuck objects!!! Cant have a movie with fuck objects!!!! Can’t women NOT BE FUCK OBJECTS WHEN THEY ARE DEFENDING THEIR HOMES AND BODILY AUTONOMY AND LIVES AT THE VERY LEAST!!!!
For bonus oh please stop, the lead character is a wheelchair user whose only motive is To Walk Again, to have his legs restored. Because OMG being disabled is The Worst Thing Ever. Guys? Can we please have some stories where the disabled character has a plot arc other than being magically healed?
And apparently all the aliens are voiced by poc? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Same shit different fucking day.
Why IS it that in every movie, from ‘Armageddon’ to ‘2012′ to ‘War of the Worlds’ to ‘Transformers’, its always a WHITE GUY saving the universe and the kids?
Not every movie. Certainly not a majority of movies worldwide. Browsing movie selections from non-Western countries recently I saw pretty homogeneous shades on their actors. In around three hundred titles from India I didn’t see any obvious evidence of a single non-Indian actor. Japanese films had more color but every single lead appeared to be Japanese.
Indian fimographers use Indian leads, Japan uses Japanese leads, I don’t have experiece with the Laotian film industry but if they have one I presume their actor’s guild is heavy with Laotians. So whites using white leads doesn’t particularly bother me.
But in the movie 2012 an Indian scientist discovered the problem, a black president and scientist were the movers and shakers behind the American contribution to the response, and they publicly admitted China’s construction of the Arks was an almost unbelievable feat of engineering.
@RonF: 1491 blew my mind. I need to reread it before I can discuss with any level of coherency though. It completely decimated my history classes and I need to rearrange a whole lot of assumption based on those damned history books. :) I’m probably write a post about it pretty soon though!
RonF, if they were guided solely by profit motive, they’d most likely make more by appealing to more audiences. They’re guided by profit, sure, but they’re ALSO guided by racism and sexism.
What I would wonder is whether they think that by including more non-whites and women in lead roles they think that they are making their movies less appealing – that there are parts of their current audience who would NOT be attracted to such movies.
I actually brought 1491 into work and recommended it to my colleagues. In fact, it’s sitting 3 feet from me as I write this. I was wondering what people here thought of it – whther they thought it was factual. I thought the writing was tremendous.
I have no reason not to think so. It certainly seemed well thought out and well presented. But I’ve not studied Native American culture much. I thought this might be a good place to ask for an opinion regarding the book.
The most recent open thread can always be found at the top of this page. When older posts have closed comments, please respond to them on the most recent open thread.
Thinking of that time that Degas painted the actress Ellen Andree sitting and looking pensive in a cafe, and Monet saw Degas' painting and decided to find the same actress and get her to pose in the same cafe so he could do his own version.
Copyright claims often go too far, crushing free speech and not allowing for the way artists are influenced by, repurpose, and even coincidentally echo, other art. Not this time, though! Jeff Dieschburg is a straight-up tracer who adds NOTHING original when he paints his copies of photos. [contains quote post or other embedded content]
Pingback: White Saviors and Racial Stereotypes in Hollywood Culture And Beyond (+ A Movie Analysis) | The Global Sociology Blog
I noticed the Couples Retreat posters in London and was disgusted but not surprised. Some larger posters do show the black couple, but they’re as far in the distance as on the American poster shown–which is scarcely better.
As a sidebar – I don’t watch these shows or watch very many movies in particular, so I can’t follow the thread much. However, I bought 1491 a couple of years ago and found it tremendously interesting. So I’m interested to hear that you found the book of value enough to cite as an informative resource. If you want me to take this to an open thread that would be fine, but I’d be interested in any further comments you have on the book.
“And then there’s the prospect of 2013…Does this strike anyone else as chock full to bursting with the potential for FAIL to the nth degree?”
It *embodies* fail.
I mean, not that I should be surprised by now or anything, but…seriously, do these people *honestly* not get it? On a very fundamental level, I do not understand this…denial? Obliviousness? Cynical awareness that the target audience will Not Get It and so it’s okay to repeat the colonization of Africa in pursuit of $$$?
Assuming that we agree that the underlying Avatar storyline would be deeply offensive if the aliens were literally NAs, how far away from humanity does a filmmaker need to go to avoid that?
It seems apparent to me that the “other culture with differing skills and ways” or the “fall in love with enemy warrior” thing are memes which have been applied in a lot of problematic ways but also a lot of nonproblematic ways. Can it be true that Avatar–in which the role of “stereotyped NA” is played by 10 foot tall aliens–is objectionable in the same way that it would be if the role was actually representing NAs?
Such a succinct, but HORRIBLE example, the cartoon ‘The Last Avatar’ — my kids saw who the actors were going to be for it, and they didn’t know who the heck they were! And both refuse to watch it because these (white) actors weren’t the characters they grew to love! At the ages of 7 and 9, going to a multi racial school where class isn’t much of an issue, they don’t understand, and I don’t know how to explain it to them. Just like I didn’t know how to explain why they couldn’t go see Bay’s Transformers, because it was so absurdly racist and sexist. I admit that I’m really, truly tired of not seeing MY world reflected in what I watch. I’m tired of seeing white men or boys the heroes of EVERY thing. THEY have lives, the rest of us are background props. And the excuse ‘it sells’ that, while it may be true, its because that seems to be ALL there IS. Why IS it that in every movie, from ‘Armageddon’ to ‘2012’ to ‘War of the Worlds’ to ‘Transformers’, its always a WHITE GUY saving the universe and the kids? When they came out with ‘Aliens’, the lower class not barbie doll Ellen Ripley did a HELL of a good job saving the kid, and made a LOT of money doing it. Its sad that instead of facing up to people trying to CORRECT this imbalance, the Hollywood boy’s club just whines as if to justify their obvious bias and continue it without interruption.
Tessombra – if you want all that to change, show Hollywood how making that change won’t risk their profits. They’re in business to make money. Social messages are a secondary issue to them.
Or that NOT making that change DOES risk their profits.
BTW: with regards to the significance of 2012, this article from Sky and Telescope gives a pretty good treatment of how it’s a mis-appropriation of Mayan culture. The Mayans themselves never represented it as a date of Armageddon. It happens that I subscribe to the magazine (the astrophotography alone is worth the cost) and read it last month.
BTW, with regards to 2012, this article from Sky and Telescope explains what is happening in the Mayan calendar then and how this is a complete misrepresentation of Mayan culture. They never predicted that Armageddon would happen on that date. It happens that I subscribe to the magazine (the astrophotography alone is worth the money) and read it last month.
RonF, if they were guided solely by profit motive, they’d most likely make more by appealing to more audiences. They’re guided by profit, sure, but they’re ALSO guided by racism and sexism.
On the subject of 2012, and given that this is a linkspam, and that my site manager says I should really try linking more, I can offer this pre-take on the movie. Anyone who’s seen the film able to say how accurate the predictions were?
Also, in an unrelated spam, here’s a really cool 3:31 minute short: The Cat With Hands.
Those movies (some of which I think are reasonably good when considered on their own) wouldn’t be so annoying if there was a more diverse set of writers and decision makers in Hollywood, and there were more films written from the point of view of non-whiteguys. Not to defend them, but what are the writers going to do? If they write from points of view they don’t share, wouldn’t many people consider that to be appropriation?
The question is, how can Hollywood become more diverse?
EDIT: Just in case you were a bit iffy on whether Mr. Cameron was an asshole, he opened his mouth and removed all doubt.
Women are not supposed to watch this thing, apparently? How fucking skeevy it is in the face of the history and ever present use of rape as a tool of war, how fucking assholish is his attitude of “oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh gotta have breasts! Must have fuck objects!!! Cant have a movie with fuck objects!!!! Can’t women NOT BE FUCK OBJECTS WHEN THEY ARE DEFENDING THEIR HOMES AND BODILY AUTONOMY AND LIVES AT THE VERY LEAST!!!!
Damn it, I actually feel like vomiting now.
Shadesong also points put something I inexcusably forgot to mention:
And apparently all the aliens are voiced by poc? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Same shit different fucking day.
Why IS it that in every movie, from ‘Armageddon’ to ‘2012′ to ‘War of the Worlds’ to ‘Transformers’, its always a WHITE GUY saving the universe and the kids?
Not every movie. Certainly not a majority of movies worldwide. Browsing movie selections from non-Western countries recently I saw pretty homogeneous shades on their actors. In around three hundred titles from India I didn’t see any obvious evidence of a single non-Indian actor. Japanese films had more color but every single lead appeared to be Japanese.
Indian fimographers use Indian leads, Japan uses Japanese leads, I don’t have experiece with the Laotian film industry but if they have one I presume their actor’s guild is heavy with Laotians. So whites using white leads doesn’t particularly bother me.
But in the movie 2012 an Indian scientist discovered the problem, a black president and scientist were the movers and shakers behind the American contribution to the response, and they publicly admitted China’s construction of the Arks was an almost unbelievable feat of engineering.
@RonF: 1491 blew my mind. I need to reread it before I can discuss with any level of coherency though. It completely decimated my history classes and I need to rearrange a whole lot of assumption based on those damned history books. :) I’m probably write a post about it pretty soon though!
RonF, if they were guided solely by profit motive, they’d most likely make more by appealing to more audiences. They’re guided by profit, sure, but they’re ALSO guided by racism and sexism.
What I would wonder is whether they think that by including more non-whites and women in lead roles they think that they are making their movies less appealing – that there are parts of their current audience who would NOT be attracted to such movies.
I actually brought 1491 into work and recommended it to my colleagues. In fact, it’s sitting 3 feet from me as I write this. I was wondering what people here thought of it – whther they thought it was factual. I thought the writing was tremendous.
I was wondering what people here thought of it – whther they thought it was factual.
Why wouldn’t you think that it was factual?
I have no reason not to think so. It certainly seemed well thought out and well presented. But I’ve not studied Native American culture much. I thought this might be a good place to ask for an opinion regarding the book.