Black Panther will lead to more diversity, which could be both good and bad

[Jimmy Higgins]

As far as Latinx representation goes - I heard more about Coco (also from Disney) than I usually do for movies. And Luis (the guy from Ant-Man) did get the same sort of redemption that Lang did - and given that it was almost entirely comedic and cookie-cutter anyway, yeah Marvel could do better here, but...eh, there's other studios to glare at first.

Yeah, blacks think they have it hard? People, including Hispanics, will be hard pressed to name 5 Hispanic protagonists in US films (you can only use Jennifer Lopez once). The best Hispanics can hope for is a quality Hispanic antagonist... gang or drug related. Off the top of my head I can think of is... you know... that person Jennifer Lopez played.

Heck, even in Costa's Missing, the main characters are all white Americans... in a movie taking place in South America!

As Reign of April says, there's a reason why the movement is "#OscarssoWhite" rather than "#Oscarsnotblack".

And unlike the Grammies, "Academy Award Winner" does carry quite a bit of weight in Hollywood, so this one does matter. And it also matters for the staff that that actor/actress/director prefers, which can mean equal opportunities for lighting, makeup, hair stylists, stunt doubles, and so forth.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to producing. In Hollywood, the safe play is to always bet on White. And the big bucks are almost all white. Tyler Perry is one of the outsiders as far as not white money (and he is worth something like $600 million!?!).

So we end up having all of these white people producing moving stories about white people starring white people. It is so engrained in our minds that if you make Annie black, some people lose their shit thinking that blacks have taken over Hollywood.

 

[Thomas II]

How many times do we get to count Antonio Banderas?

Ah... forgot about him. So there is 2.

Dude, there's also Javier Bardem (from the Bond movie, and "No country for old men") and his wife, Penelope Cruz ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona", the Woody Allen Movie)

And if Angelo hears you didn't mention Selma Hayek, he's gonna lose it...

 

[Mumbles]

As Reign of April says, there's a reason why the movement is "#OscarssoWhite" rather than "#Oscarsnotblack".

And unlike the Grammies, "Academy Award Winner" does carry quite a bit of weight in Hollywood, so this one does matter. And it also matters for the staff that that actor/actress/director prefers, which can mean equal opportunities for lighting, makeup, hair stylists, stunt doubles, and so forth.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to producing. In Hollywood, the safe play is to always bet on White. And the big bucks are almost all white. Tyler Perry is one of the outsiders as far as not white money (and he is worth something like $600 million!?!).

So we end up having all of these white people producing moving stories about white people starring white people. It is so engrained in our minds that if you make Annie black, some people lose their shit thinking that blacks have taken over Hollywood.

For that matter, I still recall people flipping out when Rue from Hunger Games was played by a black girl - even though the book itself described her brown skin and curly hair.

Fun Fact - a large part of Black Panther was apparently filmed at Tyler Perry's new studios in Atlanta. As much as I despise his self-made movies, I have to admit that he knows his audience well, does a good job catering to what they want to see, and has worked to open things up for other black people. Things get...dicier as far as Latinx/Hispanic offerings go - Last I heard (and this was admittedly long ago) Univision and the like had heavy biases against darker skin tones. But at the same time, those are entire channels.

I simply don't know enough about Asian or Native communities to speak to them...so I won't. But it wouldn't surprise me to see better latinx representation as things progress.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

How many times do we get to count Antonio Banderas?

Ah... forgot about him. So there is 2.

Dude, there's also Javier Bardem (from the Bond movie, and "No country for old men") and his wife, Penelope Cruz ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona", the Woody Allen Movie)

And if Angelo hears you didn't mention Selma Hayek, he's gonna lose it...

Okay, Cruz and Hayek have starred... and I suppose I'm stupid for not thinking of Edward James Olmos or Lou Diamond Philips. But the list of names and protagonists is pretty darn short.

 

[prideandfall]

Dude, there's also Javier Bardem (from the Bond movie, and "No country for old men") and his wife, Penelope Cruz ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona", the Woody Allen Movie)

And if Angelo hears you didn't mention Selma Hayek, he's gonna lose it...

Okay, Cruz and Hayek have starred... and I suppose I'm stupid for not thinking of Edward James Olmos or Lou Diamond Philips. But the list of names and protagonists is pretty darn short.

i'm sure this post will get me attacked as being a triggered snowflake republican cuck or whatever bag of shit underseer is waving around today, but purely as an intellectual exercise i got to wondering about demographics and representation.

as of the 2016 census 'white people' are something like 61% of the total population of the US, blacks are about 12.7%, hispanics are reported at 17.8% but you can probably add like what... 5-10% on top of that to account for immigration fears meaning the numbers are off... and the other 11% being asians and indians and what have you.

so, the idle question that popped into my head was "what percent of mainstream US release movies in a year have a black protagonist, or latin, or asian" and the same question relating to TV.
let's define "mainstream" here as "nationally available to all regions of the US at the same time with the same accessibility and relative level of exposure/advertising, making allowances for regional cultural zeitgeist".

i'd be very curious as to how the percentage of movies and TV shows match up to the percentages of the population, and then how exactly that would correlate to "representation" and what number would be ideal to hit that as a goal... both in terms of the race of the main character, and also the racial diversity of the cast.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Dude, there's also Javier Bardem (from the Bond movie, and "No country for old men") and his wife, Penelope Cruz ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona", the Woody Allen Movie)

And if Angelo hears you didn't mention Selma Hayek, he's gonna lose it...

Okay, Cruz and Hayek have starred... and I suppose I'm stupid for not thinking of Edward James Olmos or Lou Diamond Philips. But the list of names and protagonists is pretty darn short.

i'm sure this post will get me attacked as being a triggered snowflake republican cuck or whatever bag of shit underseer is waving around today, but purely as an intellectual exercise i got to wondering about demographics and representation.

as of the 2016 census 'white people' are something like 61% of the total population of the US, blacks are about 12.7%, hispanics are reported at 17.8% but you can probably add like what... 5-10% on top of that to account for immigration fears meaning the numbers are off... and the other 11% being asians and indians and what have you.

so, the idle question that popped into my head was "what percent of mainstream US release movies in a year have a black protagonist, or latin, or asian" and the same question relating to TV.
let's define "mainstream" here as "nationally available to all regions of the US at the same time with the same accessibility and relative level of exposure/advertising, making allowances for regional cultural zeitgeist".

i'd be very curious as to how the percentage of movies and TV shows match up to the percentages of the population, and then how exactly that would correlate to "representation" and what number would be ideal to hit that as a goal... both in terms of the race of the main character, and also the racial diversity of the cast.

This is simple, 61% white means 3 in 5 films have a white protagonist and 2 in 5 are others, flatly from ratios. I don’t think we are remotely close to that.

 

[Jayjay]

Muslims are pretty much typecast in film and I don't think that is going to change because of this particular movie. Never mind Latinos, Sikhs or any other group.

Sikhs in particular have it bad, since the Sikh characters are usually there just to be beaten up by someone who thinks they are muslims.

 

[prideandfall]

This is simple, 61% white means 3 in 5 films have a white protagonist and 2 in 5 are others, flatly from ratios. I don’t think we are remotely close to that.

oh definitely not, my post wasn't some hidden attempt to suggest that the ratios are somehow the same, as they clearly are not.
it was genuine curiosity about what the *actual* percentages are, though despite being genuinely interested i don't think i have it in me to extensively research every film and TV show out currently to crunch the numbers.

 

[Derec]

Out of all the movies that were made since the dawn of the movie industry, one whole movie had a cast that mostly didn't look like you! You're so oppressed!

One movie? There are plenty of movies that feature almost all black cast. Moonlight, Straight Outta Compton, all Tyler Perry movies, all those black remakes of old/British movies ...

Gosh, just imagine how you might feel if all the movies were like that.

What are you babbling on about? Most mainstream movies these days are pretty diverse. Especially superhero movies, that have gone overboard with gratuitous diversity (except notably for Black Panther) - a Norse god was made black for no reason whatsoever other than PCness, and same goes for making the Human Torch black even though he is supposed to be brother of the Invisible Girl.

And I don't mind a movie with a predominately black cast per se, but don't call the movie "diverse" because it isn't.

Unless all the movies that are made star mostly people who look like you, you are definitely being persecuted. Those dirty minorities don't deserve any representation because they are persecuting you so much.

Way to put words in people's mouths. I never said anything like that. I just said that it is stupid to call a movie with almost entirely black cast and crew "diverse", because it isn't in any way, shape or form.

 

[Derec]

Another person pontificating about Black Panther who has obviously not seen it.

I did not have to see it for the point I was making - i.e. that a movie with a cast almost entirely of one race cannot be described as "diverse".

There are plenty of white faces in the movie

This is the full cast and crew. That's not really "plenty of white faces".

two of the major characters are even white.

Which two? Judging from placement in the cast listing, only Bilbo Baggins would qualify.

It just so happens that scenes set in Wakanda portray black people almost exclusively.

Make Wakanda great again? It seems that BP's immigration policies make Donald Trump look like Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown.

Of course this makes sense, given the premise that Wakanda is a hidden, insular nation, that did not allow outsiders within it's borders, and that is one of the key aspects of the movie. But that is all it took to trigger you.

First of all, it did not "trigger" me, I merely posted a post in a discussion forum. That's what discussion fora are for.
Second, my objection was with calling this movie "diverse" when it is one of the least diverse major movies of the year.

 

[Derec]

Sikhs in particular have it bad, since the Sikh characters are usually there just to be beaten up by someone who thinks they are muslims.

Can't they just stab their assailant with that dagger they always carry with them?

 

[Derec]

Latinx is used because using "latino" for both latino and latina isn't really fair, and because saying "latino/latina" all the time would be too much typing.

How about "Latin(a|o)"?

From what I understand, it's mostly a complaint liberal Latinx folks have about the Spanish language, not about you.

Maybe not so much "liberal" but "SJW warrior"?

I could type out "latino/latina" every single time if it offends you so much. Is that something you need me to do in order to avoid being triggered?

It neither offends me nor "triggers" me. I just find it silly. I wonder how many years it will take until "Latinx" is considered offensive by the next generation of SJWs.

I'm pretty sure the professor knows that Wakanda is not a real place. College professors just love to use something that's popular at the moment in lectures as an example to illustrate something else they are talking about because it helps to keep the attention of all those hungover college kids. It's funny that you never complained about this when white philosophy professors and theology professors were using The Matrix to talk about ideas from philosophy or religion.

Not really the same. If Wakanda was used for say comparative politics, then yes, I'd see a point. But history? History deals in you know things that actually happened, not made up countries like Ruritania or Wakanda.
Besides, she is not a college professor but a middle school teacher.

Tess Raser, who teaches sixth grade at the Dulles School of Excellence in Chicago, saw Black Panther on Saturday and felt that the film would be an excellent way to start a conversation.

Even though she knows that Wakanda is real (and I was being snarky with my "I wonder") I would not be as sure when it comes to 6th graders.

- - - Updated - - -

Poor Derec.

Poor Jimmy. The needle got stuck in the groove again ...

 

[Derec]

Re: this doesn’t count as diversity... Meh - boo hoo.

The point of the video from Underseer's OP was how "diverse" BP is. Since it is actually the antithesis of "diversity", it is perfectly appropriate to point out the faulty thinking, and a retort like "boo hoo" is really not addressing the point at all.

And the fact that it had all black faces made it extra fun for me

Because you don't like white people?

and the fact that it had several layers of subtext also made it fun for me.

What subtext for example?

Diversity for me doesn’t have to be perfectly mathed out to be “diverse.”

It's not about being "perfectly mathed(sic)" or not. BP skews toward one race much more than most movies skew toward a white cast. If you like it, that's fine, but let's not pretend that the movie is 'diverse' just because it doesn't have any whites in it. Do you also think so-called HBCUs have "diverse" student bodies?

I’m quite happy with a mostly black film, it felt fun, refreshing, fresh and interesting. I can’t believe people are complaining that it was too black. Pshh. I agree with underseer’s view on most counts. Good discussion points.

Meh. An almost all black film is not fresh. It has been done a thousand times before by Tyler Perry alone. It has better CGI though.

 

[Derec]

So it's ok that Hollywood movies are almost entirely white,

But they are not. Especially superhero movies have had characters cast as black for no other reason than to increase the number of black characters vs. the comic books. Hell, they even made a Norse god black. Imagine the outcry if an African deity was played by a white actor ...

but it's not diversity if a movie is almost entirely black

No, it is not, by definition.

to counter the massive number of entirely white films?

Massive number of entirely white films? Care to name a few, made in US and in this century?
And as I said, the superhero movies have gratuitous levels of diversity with races of longstanding characters changed.

So I guess the solution is to go back to movies being entirely white?

Who said anything about that?

How does the logic of that argument even work?

No idea. Since you came up with it as a feeble straw man, you figure it out.

Nothing about the argument you and Derec are making makes any sense.

Well, not the straw man version.

And how do you think we're going to get movies from a Sikh-American perspective or a Sikh perspective unless someone proves to those Hollywood movie executives that a movie from the perspective of more populous minorities can make money first?

Should that be a pressing issue? Endless identity politics? Or should it be making good movies?

I'm sorry, but your objection just sounds like white fragility to me.

Sounds pretty racist to me to accuse white people of fragility just because they disagree with you.

I'll repeat what I said to Derec. If having one movie full of faces that mostly didn't look like you bothered you this much, just imagine how you would feel if all (or nearly all) movies were like that.

Again, for the millionth time. It's one thing to make a predominately black movie. It's quite another to pretend that this movie is "diverse" when it's the opposite (which is fine, not everything has to be diverse) or that most Hollywood movies are all white (they are not).

 

[Derec]

]This is a key reflection. Imagine if all movies were produced by Tyler Perry. The trouble is, for some white people, it seems that if a movie has too much black.... it is not diverse.

Well it ain't.

They look at an individual movie, not the entire slate of films being put out each year.

Well look at the entire slate. It's not like it's all white cast except for BP. Look at last year. You have Finn in SW: Last Jedi, you have Rock and Kevin Hart in Jumanji, you have Zoe Saldana and Vin Diesel(?) in Guardians of the Galaxy. Then you had, also in 2017, Get Out which was a movie where every single white person is an evil villain. There was also a Tupac biopic.

For Derec, it is okay to have War Machine in a movie that is predominantly white. But it isn't okay to switch it. I don't think Patooka is making the same sort of case.

I am not saying it's not ok to "switch" it, as you say, but let's not pretend one movie is any more diverse than the other.

- - - Updated - - -

As far as Latinx representation goes - I heard more about Coco (also from Disney) than I usually do for movies. And Luis (the guy from Ant-Man) did get the same sort of redemption that Lang did - and given that it was almost entirely comedic and cookie-cutter anyway, yeah Marvel could do better here, but...eh, there's other studios to glare at first.

Didn't Marvel change Spiderman to be a "Latinxyz" or something?

 

[Derec]

Yeah, blacks think they have it hard? People, including Hispanics, will be hard pressed to name 5 Hispanic protagonists in US films (you can only use Jennifer Lopez once).

Protagonists or actors? I assume you mean actors, since you said J-Lo and not one of her character names.
How about Javier Bardem? Or does he not count since he is Spanish-Spanish?
Among actresses, Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek come to mind. Does Cameron Diaz count?

With aforementioned Antonio Banderas and J-Lo, that's at least five already.

The best Hispanics can hope for is a quality Hispanic antagonist... gang or drug related.

Danny Trejo for example.

Off the top of my head I can think of is... you know... that person Jennifer Lopez played.

Oh, you do mean characters. Well J-Lo alone starred in at least five movies, didn't she?

Heck, even in Costa's Missing, the main characters are all white Americans... in a movie taking place in South America!

When the plot of a movie centers on people from country A travelling to country B it is natural for main characters to be from A. Also, that movie is from 1982. Not exactly a timely example.

 

[Derec]

As Reign of April says, there's a reason why the movement is "#OscarssoWhite" rather than "#Oscarsnotblack".

Started by idiots who think Oscars should be given on a quota/affirmative action system. Of course, the Academy caved because last year Moonlight won. And this year you got all the affirmative action nominees like Get Out. It is virtual certainty BP will be nominated for best picture for that same reason.

- - - Updated - - -

Lupita Nyong'o

Quite a beautiful woman. But was there a point in posting her photo other than eye candy?

 

[Derec]

Okay, Cruz and Hayek have starred... and I suppose I'm stupid for not thinking of Edward James Olmos or Lou Diamond Philips. But the list of names and protagonists is pretty darn short.

So we are counting 1/2-Filipinos too? Cool. Didn't know they count as Latinxyz.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This is simple, 61% white means 3 in 5 films have a white protagonist and 2 in 5 are others, flatly from ratios. I don’t think we are remotely close to that.

oh definitely not, my post wasn't some hidden attempt to suggest that the ratios are somehow the same, as they clearly are not.
it was genuine curiosity about what the *actual* percentages are, though despite being genuinely interested i don't think i have it in me to extensively research every film and TV show out currently to crunch the numbers.

My guess would be 1.5 to 2 to 10 for wide distribution. Certainly someone figured this out somewhere, probably Derec or repoman.

 

[repoman]