Does it feel like I'm picking fights with everybody?

I don't mean to.

I'm just on a night shift.

OK I don't really understand the question.

I'm going to go with .... yes?

JRPC wrote:

Escape wrote:

Just further to what I wrote up there, I wouldn't change anything about Black Panther out of my disdain for rich whites profiting from it. I've seen those clips of excited black kids and they're great, and the idea of an African society in a sky city (presuming that's where they live) is a cool one. I also imagine that lots of African-American academics would be against the potentially stereotypical adoption of their accents over the current ones. Anti-colonialism's the right move for me.

But I do agree with that petition because I feel that Disney should pay forward some of their ludicrous gains to black causes.

Don't really get that.

They're the only mega-studio doing something meaningful in this space and there must have been at least a perceived risk involved.

Shouldn't they be rewarded?

I don't see why they should be asked to pay up for breaking new ground and doing something meaningful.

I don’t really think it’s brave or risky or anything. Around the turn of the millennium, Disney started trying to be not as goddamn white and racist. They’ve done this gradually, strategically, waiting for demographic changes to make bigger moves more viable while not putting off their white america Bible Belt tossers. They bought Marvel and Star Wars specifically to target and expand into teen and young adult demographics. And now here we are with this Black Panther film.

When they were deciding what avengers they were going to pick up to make movies with, they could have ignored Black Panther. Or done it as a box-ticking exercise. They would have probably taken some flak for either approach though. So they deserve some credit for finally doing this the right way after decades of not doing so. I don’t see it as anything other than good business by them though, planned over years and timed to perfection, it would seem. They’ve also been a bit lucky that this has come in the middle of what is basically a western culture civil war meaning people are right behind this for all sorts of other reasons. It’s certainly not some ground breaking initiative they took a chance on. Worse case scenario for them was it was another middle of the road superhero film that did ok at the box office.

Blade wasn't Disney, it was New Line. It was over a decade before they bought Marvel.

I don't really know what Will Smith has to do with Disney either.

And there's a massive difference between a TV show and their headline movie till avengers

I'm sure old white guys are delighted to have Africans making loads of money for them again. [/sarcasm]

regmcfly wrote:

I'm sure black guys and girls are glad to see they've got massive representation


Christ how is this hard

Because you’re trying to make it an either /or when it isn’t.

ChopperByrne wrote:

Black Panther is not the first positive portrayal of a black character they've had. They started it with Blade, which wasn't a one and done. It had two sequels. Then they had the Luke Cage Netflix series. Will Smith has been playing superhero, or superhero style characters for over 20 years.

I know what you mean but I think the big difference with Black Panther (apart from it being Disney although I dont think thats actually that big a deal) is that if you look back at those films they have a touch of token black. Blades not too bad, but stuff like beverly hills cop, men in black etc. is that although they had black heros the support cast is usually heavily white. 

For me I'm not sure where I honestly stand on diversity being a role in the entertainment industry. It shouldnt be forced on a studio to hire ethnic people just because and I dont have an issue with the 'white washing' thing if the main part of your audience is white. I wouldnt expect the chinese movie industry to feature westerns if they adapted a western story. I woudlnt expect bollywood to not play to their main audience. And I wouldnt expect a story about wakanda to feature a diverse multi ethnic culture either. 

That said, there is no denying the positive response to Black Panther. But this comes at a cost as well. Anyone criticising the movie runs the risk of backlash as if a bad review is somehow recist (as happened to Irish critic Ed Power). Similar, the films metacritic has been targeted by alt right dickheads in a similar manner to the last jedi (I'm only refering to those who objected to a female lead and a black main character, as opposed to people who genuinely didnt like the film) Surely the end goal of diversity is to make films inclusive and not feel that they belong only to one audience? It seems diversity can be as divisive as anything.

Not sure where I'm going with all that but there we are.

I don't think anyone is claiming that it is.

RedDave2 wrote:

... Similar, the films metacritic has been targeted by alt right dickheads in a similar manner to the last jedi (I'm only refering to those who objected to a female lead and a black main character, as opposed to people who genuinely didnt like the film) Surely the end goal of diversity is to make films inclusive and not feel that they belong only to one audience? It seems diversity can be as divisive as anything...

Nah, it’s only “divisive” for a tiny number of blowhard dickheads on the internet who are butthurt that vidyagames and superhero films aren’t exclusively “for them” any more.
Don’t fall for that “both sides are as bad as each other” bullshit narrative.

It is kinda incredible watching those people act like 3 black centric films getting decent press in the space of 2 years is forced diversity, SJW nonsense, cynical pandering or whatever. But they're not snowflakes, of course.

There's also a lot of good writing done as to why Kanye, Will Smith and Beyonce don't mean that everything's just fine for representation now.

It's never wise to conflate extreme opinions or people complaining about metacritic with more nuanced perspectives though. There are always blowhards.

But as for space for criticism of something like Black Panther: guess who also didn't like Black Panther? 

TBH, considering how much we’re learning about attempts to create divisions through social media, I’m going to believe that those saying that the film isn’t for white people are sock puppet accounts until proven otherwise.

That's possible of course but there's enough video evidence on YouTube of many black Americans being extremely defensive of white people culturally appropriating (hate that term) something which they see as their own. And i do understand the sentiment behind it to an extent (see Irish reaction whenever sky sports claims an Irish athlete as british)

For me the big change is that the cast is nearly all black. 10 years ago I'd imagine a few a white heroes would need to be shoehorned in. Possibly even Wakanda would need some white people in its populace if nothing else, black Panthers success proves that that's no longer the case.