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Diversity Is The Talismanic God Of Woke Hollywood | Should We Care About Raceswapping?

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In this video, I will be discussing the hot topic of diversity in media and how it relates to the upcoming Disney live action adaptation of The Little Mermaid, set to release in 2023. The casting of a black actress as Ariel has sparked a culture war amongst fans, with some pushing for representation and others for accuracy to the source material.
I will be exploring different perspectives on this issue, including the "woke" movement and traditional values, and providing my own view on the topic. I will also mention other animated Disney titles that have been adapted or had representation of diversity in media such as Marvel's Black Panther, The Princess And The Frog, and Hercules.
From the Left perspective, there is a desire for inclusion of minorities due to past injustices where marginalized people were not included in mainstream media. They want to ensure young black children can see people like them in prominent roles, such as Ariel, which would make them feel like it's possible to aim for those roles themselves. On the other hand, the Right wants accuracy to the source material over things like diversity or inclusion. They don't see it as fair when a white role is turned into a black role for no other reason than pushing a cultural narrative.
Join me as we delve into my interpretation of the whole situation as well as my opinions on diversity in general.
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Опубликовано:

26 авг 2024

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Комментарии : 35

@evenman27 Год назад

When I saw the title I was wary about what to expect from a channel like this that doesn't usually deal with politics so directly. But I think you have some pretty reasonable thoughts here. The steelman interpretations seemed very accurate as well. When you described my side I was like "yup, that's pretty much my exact thought process." But you've given me some things to think about.

@RavensRants Год назад

I don't plan on getting any more political on my channel than this video and most of my coming videos won't be on this level, but it was something I wanted to get off my chest. Glad I didn't make a fool of myself ☺

@aydensauvageau9393 Год назад

As someone pretty far too the left, my biggest issue with this is the assumption that the actress wasn't the best for the role before anyone has seen it

@ckirkwalsh Год назад

As Raven said, the assumption may simply based on a desire to be true to source material (i.e. “the actress cannot be the best for the role because the choice of the actress doesn’t ring true to the source material”). Now sometimes, that isn’t the case, and the assumption is in fact based on racism. In those cases, it is 100% fair to take issue. I do, and we all should. Personally, I don’t think the source material stance is the best one as I (like Raven) think quality of the story should be the most important factor. I also think that sometimes people use the source material stance as a guise for their racism. However, just because I don’t like the source material stance, and I think it is sometimes used for racist purposes, doesn’t mean the stance is definitively racist. I take issue with people declaring someone racist when they don’t understand the motives behind their stance. Motives matter, and we won’t last long as a society if we always assume the worst motives for anyone who disagrees with us. Anyway, just some nuance to throw out there. Cheers!

@RavensRants Год назад

She may very well be! But as I said, I don't care about her race. My issue is that Hollywood uses accusations of racism as a get out of jail free card for a bad product. And it feels a lot more racist to me that they're happy to use black actors and actresses as pawns in all this.

@jacqueshardin4601 Год назад

@@RavensRants There is another issue of the source material stance. Many Disney films are based on already existing stories that existed through oral traditions. The Little Mermaid is an outlier as it was written by Hans Christian Anderson. Even so, the Little Mermaid from 1989 is a VERY different story to the one Anderson wrote. Go read it if you have not already if want to see what I mean. What I am trying to say is that do people mean source material as in the original animated film or the original story by Anderson? And is that always a good thing, being faithful, I mean? Sometimes, you need to reinvent something to make it fresh. Just look at Hadestown. A Broadway musical that retells the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Plus, I am pretty sure the Little Mermaid (1989) takes place in the Mediterranean, where trade between various European, African, and Middle Eastern countries took place for centuries. Humans have always interacted with eachother and migrated from place to place. Besides, it is a fairy tale, not history. So I can suspend my disbelief either way.

@orsoncart1547 Год назад

Source material? The source material you remember from your childhood maybe? How many Westerns and Period Dramas had the wrong clothes, accents, and actual drama never close to the source material, but nobody complained then? How many of the same were supposed to be historical dramas, not even fiction? How many famous musicals didn't even use the voice of the actors involved and were dubbed by actualsingers, but are ignored now.

@ckirkwalsh Год назад

You guys make a good point about the source material argument. One that I agree with. My point here is that if someone makes the source material argument (even if they mean the ones they grew up with and not the original), they *might* not be racist. I’ll leave it there and let whoever else have the last word, because the internet probably isn’t our best forum for a nuanced back and forth. :)

@Jlbrack84 Год назад

Great video and very insightful. I have been calling this trend of deliberately race swapping legacy characters in Hollywood as tactical diversity. Diversity is wonderful, but hiring a person or race swapping a character for the sake of tactical diversity is advantageous and wrong. The studios know that if a movie isn’t good they can blame fans as not liking a movie for the diverse cast rather than the poor choices the writers and directors make.

@RavensRants Год назад

100% agreed

@sojalemmi1515 Год назад

How is it equality to force black peoples into European settings? it is just as silly as forcing white people into sub-sahara arfrican settings. the question you have to ask is, if this is about diversity and fairness, why has every other European aspect of the story been kept, from the mannerisms and speech patterns of the actors to the scenery? wouldn't real diversity include different cultures instead of simple race swapping? you can't keep all the European aspects of the story and then change the race of the characters and claim this is legitimate representation, it is no better than white-washing characters.

@RavensRants Год назад

A very valid point 👍

@Suplex479 Год назад

Having any alterior motive for any art form only leads to negative things

@RavensRants Год назад

200% Agree. Creativity suffers the moment you start creating for anything other than the art itself.

@joshuagcwong734 Год назад

The rule is simple. If the character's race/ethnic heritage is significant to a story then it should not be changed. Can't have a white Martin Luther King Jr. If it's a fictional goddamn fish-woman hybrid, it doesn't matter, regardless of the German origin of the story. In the case of House of the Dragon, for those who seem to believe Corlys Velaryon being black is immersion-breaking, they are wrong. As 1) Valyrians are a made up people who--in the context of the books--very well could have been of mixed ancestry aswell; and 2) genetics irl are such that a "white" man can have a black grandfather but appear almost entirely white in origin. Meaning Aegon I could very well have had a black Velaryon mother. The closest relative to Aegon I we see on the show is the "white" grandson Jaehaerys I. As a mixed race person myself, if I were to have kids with a white woman my kids would almost certainly appear entirely white. My Chinese father would very much look unrelated to his grandchildren 😂. It is this real life reality that most are ignorant to.

@RavensRants Год назад

Very good points made here!

@jacqueshardin4601 Год назад

I recommend watching a video by Princess Weekes titled What Does Nuance Really Look Like? It is the best video on this whole discussion in my opinion. And an interesting video by James Somerton about the diversity in the Rings of Power.

@RavensRants Год назад

Appreciate the recommendations!

@AseAPS Год назад

I don't care if Ariel is black; I care if the movie is trash. For instance, I didn't care that The Eternals had every sort of inclusion under the rainbow. I care that it was garbage. They had so many characters that had so many agendas associated with them that we spent a large part of the movie introducing them. We didn't talk about the issues related to them, and the screen play was a bloated mess. The movie was bad because it was bad.

@RavensRants Год назад

Exactly. I want good stories, man. I'm tired of being called a bigot for just pointing out a bad movie. Valid criticism is not the same as racism

@tobiasmuller3089 Год назад

Good Video Hollywood Adaptions off fantasy is really Bad right now just saw velma it really one of the worst shows ever it really hits all the thinks bad about modern tv shows you described

@RavensRants Год назад

I'm definitely not watching Velma. Already heard how bad it is 😂

@averagenoah Год назад

Frankly I don’t care. I think it was a good move to inspire black kids. My main problem is that people are hating on Ariel being black, but no one cares that King Triton is Spanish. I actually prefer this decision, mainly because it’s Javier Bardem. My friend was annoyed at this because he said the thing that made Ariel iconic was her red hair and white skin. At this I was dumbfounded. They’re my friend, but this was literally the dumbest thing I’ve heard them say. Because the white skin and red hair weren’t the iconic things about her. The iconic things were that she was a mermaid and her voice. Heck, her voice was the catalyst that made Eric marry Ariel.

@RavensRants Год назад

I agree, but Hollywood tends to use diversity as a shield against criticism. That's my main issue

@foodsupply5071 Год назад

I liked you Steelmanning both sides of the arguments and I do not disagree with your personal opinion. I do however feel like the problem with people disliking movies just because they include diversity is relatively big (in the Internet) We have after all the whole go woke go broke Phrase that people tend to throw around and that doesn’t even only exist with already existing characters. I remember the uproar when the last of us left behind dlc came out where it was revealed that Ellie is gay. Jesus Christ people couldn’t shut up about that fact and I personally couldn’t find a reason for why they would react that way if it is a original character. I think everyone cares about representation it just tends to not be known to the people that always had it. I asked a straight friends once if he would like gay romance movies and he simply said no because I need to find a place in that movie where I can identify with the people and plot. As a gay man actual gay romance just is more enjoyable. All in all this was a very pleasant and not extreme view which gets increasingly rarer. Edit: I just remembered that there is also a recent example where race swapping wasn’t critiqued by the wide public which ironically is also the last of us HBO series where Sarah the daughter of Joel is race swapped from a white girl to a black girl and it got almost no backlash as far as I could tell because they still stayed very true to the character. So I guess I could be wrong I don’t know it is hard to tell on the Internet how big a group actually is

@jeois411 Год назад

I think you're overgeneralizing, and it's pretty hypocritical. Sure, you can find people on the internet who will retort any criticism with accusations of racism, but how much of that is directed towards narrative critiques rather than the shoehorning of the diversity issue into it, which is what they accuse us of doing. For example, any time there was one or two black actors in a historical film set in Europe, the critics will talk about historical accuracy, but they'll ignore the dozens of other historically inaccurate aspects of the plot and focus on the race of the actor without checking if it is indeed accurate to the time period. Yes, sometimes producers and writers will use diversity as a crutch to deflect from weak storytelling, but if you keep the focus of your critiques away from race, then the accusations of racism are easily dismissed, and even the of the majority of those who support diversity will eventually agree with you. You can't claim to represent the most generous version of the argument, but then only focus on the most unreasonable people who misuse it and act like that's the norm for everyone.

@jacqueshardin4601 Год назад

The whole red hair erasure thing was really stupid because we can see she does have red hair still. And we know that the actress is a really good singer, so honestly, her blackness is likely to be the least of whatever issues the film will have. Especially since I heard people having an issue with the casting of Ursula and the fact the teaser lacks any color. At the end of the day, the real problem is that corporate media by default needs to be for everyone. This is why I am seeking more independent media in recent years. Video games like Hades and Hollow Knight. Independent animation like Helluva Boss and Murder Drones. Corporate media could never be like these properties.

@RavensRants Год назад

I appreciate your insights. I was referring more to the establishment media and their journalistic shills when I spoke about the racism accusations. They're the loudest voice on the left which has set the terms for the overton window in modern times. It felt more pertinent to address them in this video

@jeois411 Год назад

@@RavensRants I don't watch much mainstream media, but from what I gather, there's just as much anti-woke hysteria as there is uncritical supposedly woke takes. It seems like every few weeks, they're complaining about some character's race or orientation, and I don't really see much of what you're describing, where someone is making a narrative critique and the apologists are defending the work based on diversity when that wasn't the main thrust of the criticism. Yes, when the media summarizes criticism of a film or work, sometimes they oversimplify and conflate the aggregate arguments, but that usually has no lasting effect if the criticisms were valid otherwise. I'm sure it does happen, but I question whether the right-wing media has hyped up the outrage and exaggerated its prevalence. As for the overton window, I really don't think these cultural representations actually help much overall, which I find interesting that you'd want it fixed to remain the same, and that's nearly impossible and also undesirable, in my opinion. Perhaps I misunderstood, but it's strange that you'd even bring that up if your main complaint is about narrative issues disguised as diversity because in that case you'd be neutral when it came to diversity positions and wouldn't care unless it impacted bad storytelling, like you explained.