I was just reading this book from Jonathan Haidt about morality.
His book tries to explain that moral intuition drive our politics—and dismissing opposing views as mere “ignorance”, "masculinity issues" or “stupidity” is a lazy way to avoid engaging with real moral differences.
Dismissing alternative perspectives as "pathetic" doesn't make you enlightened; it just signals that you're comfortable inside a partisan echo chamber.
Maybe you should try to understand why people value things differently, rather than hiding behind psychoanalysis to protect your own worldview.
Yeah I agree, and I believe there are two camps about this, one camp that are misogyny and racist that don't like having women or black people represented in movies or series, but I believe that that camp is quite small (but loud), and the other camp that believe that it sometimes doesn't make historically or anthropologically sense. I belong in the second camp.
One of the worst offenders here that I can remember in recent times is The Rings of Power, where the Harfoots (a group of nomadic hobbits) that very extremely wary of outsiders that stayed close together, yet they where a big mix of all white and black which doesn't make sense much sense, if they are a close group and have been living like this for a long time they should be more or less the same coloured. Also this is set in a land that is based on medieval Europe, so having any black makes little sense to begin with, no matter if it's a fantasy or not.
Becuase every piece of movie, series or any kind of art do have a "universe" with a set of rules that it builds it's entire plot around, and being a fantasy it often have magic and beings that don't exist in the real world etc, but the rules of the real world very often applies, sort of like everyone do breath air, eats food, gravity being a thing, rain being wet etc. And at least to me and many other people the nature of where people are born and how they look depending on the environment they live in is also quite rigid no matter if it's history, fiction or fantasy. This is why I think having a group of secluded hobbits in The Rings of Power being extremely diverse doesn't make any sense, but on the other hand in the same series there is Númenor, a big central city with lots of people, traders etc are coming in from many parts of the world, so here it makes much for sense that the characters are much more spread in their ethnicity, no problem.
And sure, one can let something like the hobbits diverse colours slide if they rest of the story is actually good, but in the case of The Rings of Power it wasn't, like having the main character swimming 100 miles in the ocean, survive a 30 meter fall with barely a bruise, soley beating several bigger men in combat or surviving a volcano blast in the face is just one of many problems. Galadriel have been called girlboss with the thickest of plot armor for a reason, and those characters are barely fun to watch.
Now a badass woman like Ridley in Alien on the other hand, no girlboss, no plot armor, no politics, just a well written character in a very good movie (with a diverse cast as well that probably not many people at all have ever complained about).
And now when it comes to The Odyssey there have been complains about Lupita Nyong'o playing Helen of Troy because she shouldn't be black. And yeah I agree about that, but I also think more or less of the cast shouldn't be in there either. Neither Lupita Nyong'o or Matt Damon looks like they come from the eastern parts of the Mediterranean. And again, I don't care if it's a documentary, fiction of fantasy, if it's set in the Mediterranean please have them at least look like they come from there.
I'd even argue that not having people that come or at least look they come from the region where a movie is being set is more racist that complaining about a black women playing Helen of Troy!
Some people do argue that they need big names such as Matt Damon in the cast list to sell tickets, and yeah unfortunately this seem to be true for some reason I don't fully agree with or even understand, but there are big actors that could sell tickets while also looking Greek to play Odysseus, Oscar Isaac for example, maybe Billy Zane or everyones favourite Pedro Pascal
Though we did have some fitting actors, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal and John Leguizam so it wasn't all bad.
But I gotta ask those of you that are fully fine with having a diverse cast despite it doesn't make historical or anthropological sense, would you be fine with Matt Damon playing Kunta Kinte?
)
, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.
