its really weird how thorough it is and there are a ton of examples. new spiderman movies, mary jane is black. little mermaid black. starfire black (though still a redhead, which is interesting). triss in the witcher is black (though brunette in the books not the game). orphan annie is black now. wally west is now black (flash movie). they turned cyclone (a redhead with storm powers) into a black lady, which is kinda a trope at this point... hawk girl is black now, cw rendition of arrow. bat woman is black now. april o'neil from TMNT. heimdall in the marvel comics was a redhead but black now. beau from she-ra was redheaded but black now. the thing's wife is now black. alice monahan from hellboy is now black. artemis in wonder woman used to be a redhead. judge renslayer in loki (from the most recent thing). bat girl is black now. the character design of domino in deadpool is very cool though.
i think itd be lit if we got some historical african religious stories with a fantastical twist, i really would like to see some authentic stuff rather than just copy pasting black people over redheads. wakanda is an example but the fusion there does africa dirty, i think. theres so many cultures and so many dead myths and religions to explore that simply havent even been considered. they could make some fantastic watching material that no one has considered or seen before.
or just come up with new characters and weave them into plot importance
I'm picturing an all black reboot of The Sopranos to make :anti-italian-action: meltdown.
"Yo, Tony - we're gonna go to André's - you want us to pick you up something?"
"Nah, I just had some cannolis."
"What the fuck is cannolis?"
Tony laughs and then purses his lips.
:thonk: but I wouldn't know, I've only seen a couple episodes of that show.
The best guess I have is that these characters were already the "diverse" character in the past and now they have to be non-white to maintain that ...brand, for lack of a better word. I seem to notice most of these are side-kicks or otherwise not the main characters of the stories that they're in, so that would make sense that they were a sort of token red-head in the past and are now being updated to a different token character.
Typing that out feels really gross though because of how many shitty stupidpol-esque tropes I have to engage with to get that idea out. To be clear, white genocide isn't real and stupidpol is dogshit.
yeah thats the big thing that stands out to me too. none of the main characters end up black, they just throw a black person in to be a love interest for a white character or have the black person show up for 30 seconds and do something cool and leave
sub plot characters used to be red-heads, they are supposed to be the quirky sidekicks, and that just happens to map easily onto culturally being able to be replaced by black characters - you get to say you're woke and "good" without actually doing any extra work.
Really looking forward to Denzel Washington's new period piece, "Irish Need Not Apply".
I always boil this down to: having black actors is different from having black roles. It's fine to make the cast of Hamilton all black but it's still just a regurgitation of white history.
I dont really think the two can be exclusive though, like thats a major gimmick of Hamilton. Using POC to do whitewashed history is uniquely fucked IMO.
This is why I need to read the comments before writing my own. I said a similar thing but you said it way better.
Everyone here pretty much nailed it. But I want to add that I've been watching Downton Abby and it's fucking hilarious the amount of red heads they go through on that show.
Multiple red heads per season either written off or killed, to be immediately replaced by another red head, and no one else really lmao.
The British have such a deep seeded issue with the Irish it blows my mind watching them try to navigate it in stuff like this.
Yeah in addition to all the good points here, I actually do dislike how characters are being switched to POC at random, because usually their out-of-place skin color is just not acknowledged at all. (I should say, in some settings it really doesn't matter and you can absolutely swap).
And making "European fairy tale but Blasian this time" is absolutely, absolutely done instead of doing any kind of original content set in a non-white cultural setting.
I would love to see 90% the characters on my screen not be white, but it's pretty hollow if they're just literally pretending to be white.
There was a great DS9 episode where they all cosplay 1930's or something in the Holosuites, and Sisko gets uncomfortable because the holosuite program was just pretending racism didn't exist, and treating every human player like respected professionals and members of mainstream society.
It was the only portrayal in Star Trek that I can think of, where those citizens of the utopian future still have to acknowledge that being Black still holds on to some meaning even into the future, especially as residents of the former USA, which Sisko & family are.
There were some other DS9 episodes that talked about race, like the bell riots one and the one where Sisko's mind is going back to the 40's author who has to ghostwrite as a white man.
The DS9 episode was Badda-Bing Badda-Bang and it was Vic Fontaine's 1950s Vegas casino.
I always liked that moment as you said because it is someone acknowledging the problem created with historical programs in a world that has moved passed that history.
I like that Yates' counter-argument is that it might be nice to experience history as it should have been, rather than how it really was.
I don't really come down on either side but it's an interesting way to look at it.
Wouldn't be surprised if it was Avery Brooks who asked for the scene tbh. He was often vocally critical of some choices because he didn't want to be just another black character they were they often written. It's why he liked his relationship with Jake Sisko so much.
On a related note, the episode If Wishes Were Horses script was changed from a leprechaun into Rumplestiltskin because Colm Meaney objected to the Irish stereotype.
Reminds me of a point my friend made about which comic characters can just be POC and which would need actual changes. Like Captain America if it is Rogers then that changes everything, and even different characters like Sam Wilson need to have the racism of the symbol of America be addressed earnestly. Batman on the other hand more easily can be black, same with Peter Parker Spider-Man.
A lot of media really does try to act colorblind, with no understanding or care for the fact that all those unique experiences POCs face that we talk about mattering, actually carry over and you can't just write a white story and call it a day.
With Little Mermaid, you have the whole of mythology to work with, but instead take a European novel based on some French folklore. If it has to be name recognition then do a story more specific to mermaids in African culture like Mami Wata, Njuzu, Aycayla, or Jengu. I am glad these films are getting more diversity, and if it is between a white-lead remake and a black-lead remake then the latter is the best route, but we need to not just relegate black leads to existing roles in European stories
Yeah the title "the little mermaid" could be used to describe fucking anyone, and you can just have a different mermaid - it can take place in the same world and timeline, just far away.
You could even share characters, if you set it just a few years apart. Younger Ursula could come by doing something bad or whatever, and maybe getting owned by the African mermaids really fucks her up
“European fairy tale but Blasian this time”
What movie are you talking about?
that would be pretty sick ngl but no its a straw man. ive seen european medieval stuff where just black actors pretend to be English or whatever
Irish Erasure
Seriously, though. Spiderman, Captain America, and Green Lantern are all black now. None of them were red heads.
I suspect we're seeing the shift in large part because the underlying demographics are changing.
My favorite part of Falcon/Captain America is
spoiler
how Isaiah gave a really good explanation about how America treats black people and how him coming out might put his life in danger because he's supposed to be dead, and why would a black man want to be Captain America for a country like America. And then Falcon goes forward with it anyway because of his sister's pep talk which was basically 'nu uh', gets Isaiah to give him props, puts Isaiah in a museum.... without addressing any of what Isaiah was so angry about or the dangers of him being discovered as a super soldier.
This is your brain on Liberalism.
Just acknowledging shit is fucked and continuing onward business as usual.
This reminds me of what I really didn't like about that Hamilton musical. Rather than tell a black story, of which there are plenty in American history, they told another white people story but just made all the characters black... and unsurprisingly they get a ton of praise for it from liberals....
theres still an aryan quota on the books, but *rish people are not protected under any law, human or divine :very-smart:
triss in the witcher is black (though brunette in the books not the game)
Wait what, I don't remember Triss showing up in the show at all? There was a different character who was changed from being nearly identical to Yennefer to being played by a black actress in the show and apparently people were mad that that "ruins" some story about her impersonating Yen to seduce Geralt or something like that, as if any plot issues like that can't just be handwaved away with "because literal magic lmao".
Triss is in the Striga episode, i.e. where I had to officially check out because of how they butchered what was one of the best stories and trivially easy to adapt into television for no fucking reason other than pure vanity. If I kept watching, then I would've gotten to check out in the next episode where Queen Calanthe shows up literally covered in blood to a banquet.
I don't remember any details of that, but then I was pretty drunk while watching the whole thing since it was around the holidays.
if you've seen the show, go read it, it's like 20 pages. They turned Foltest from an empathetic and intelligent king, "Slim and pretty -- too pretty" into some fat imbecile, they turned Ada's parentage from common knowledge (atleast within the aristocracy) into a terrible secret just so that Geralt can show how smart he is by doing a Sherlock Holmes style deduction when he meets Foltest. Foltest threatens to kill Geralt, when one of the most memorable things he does in the books is assure Geralt he wont be harmed if he has to kill Ada in self-defense, just that he try and save her. They add Triss into the story and then have nothing for her to do, and it probably fucks with her character's chronology.
I've only read the short story.
I forget what the twist or like...mystery was....I think one of the advisors was in love with Foltest sister-wife? or something?
I don't remember.
could be wrong, its something me and the bf noticed and we just tried to list all the things we remembered
Were you thinking of the sorceress who's set up as sort of a rival to Yen, the one working with the Nilfgardians? I forget her name, but that's the character they changed.
i think itd be lit if we got some historical african religious stories with a fantastical twist,
Why do you think your average Black American cares more about some historical African religious story instead of being represented in the generic American context of a caper flick?
yeah man, I don’t know what to tell you, you don’t sound a whole lot different from the frothing at the mouth neckbeards getting mad that their favorite blanket wearer is half Dominican. Like, who gives a shit.
I just thought of a terrible joke. And I'm going to keep it to myself because its just that bad.
