Check your priviledge, movie reviwers

[tawg]

This actually happened ages ago, but I was reminded the other day that it still makes me cranky. This is not any kind of insightful, intellectual, or particularly coherent post. It's written mainly because I can't make my frustration fit 140 characters and just tweet it

Comments

[glam_jam]

I like that you wrote this all out.

Somehow, I've never really though about how skin color can affect some performances (whoo, white privelege), especially in the way that you described with Tuvok. (Voyager ♥)

My reaction to, uh, gods of color would be something along the lines of how in most religions, humans are made in the image of the gods (sorta), so if there are multi-colored humans, it makes sense to have multi-colored gods. I'm probably leaning way to much on Judeo-Christian mythology, though. Whomp whomp.

[tawg]

I thought the Vulcan thing was really interesting because a) I'd never heard of that debate before, and b) in all of the debates I've seen about white people being cast to play COCs there has been anger about the character having been turned white. It's like, whiteness is so awesome that it is a trait conferred to the character from the actor without question, but people still debate about whether a POC is playing a COC? It's boggling but probably something that I should think about more.

I know that (and this is SO hand-wavey and vague, I'm sorry) some Hindu art has blue gods, and I've seen art depicting demons as verious colours for different cultures. I honestly don't know a lot about Norse mythology and stuff... but it has people from different worlds and people turning into animals. Within a mythos that has so much magic and such diversity, would different skin colours really be a big deal?

[iibnf]

But... the Vikings got around, ya know? They would have seen people of colours other than white. Then enslaved them and killed them and raped them, yeah, but there's no reason why they couldn't have incorporated them into their mythology.

Also, I thought that fandom got past the idea of a uni-colour Vulcan population years ago. Why do they hang on to their racism so tenaciously? Surely the lumpy/non-lumpy Klingon issue is a far bigger problem.

[tawg]

Everything you've written is accurate. I had a longer reply filled with musings on racial representations in Star Trek, but LJ ate it which I'm taking as a sign that it was rambly and uninteresting.

[dave_baker]

STO (which admittedly is non-canon) had a storyline where the smooth browed Klingons were the aberration, and not the wringkle browed ones. In the story, Tom and Belanna's child was kidnapped and taken back in time, because as the Kuva'Magh (or however you spell it) the child's DNA will be able to return the Klingon race to what it should be. An interesting idea. It's as good as any other fanon.

[pollums]

black Heimdall is the superior Heimdall anyway \o/

[tawg]

He was seriously amazing.

[tawg]

Yes, she complained about the COCs in Asgard because it deviates from the Norse canon, but had nothing to say about Loki and Thor being brothers (Loki's family tree rivals the Flash's in terms of how weird it is). And she mentioned that she doesn't know the Marvel canon for Thor at all, so... Sigh, wtf is up with people.