Other topic: People are really butt hurt about Idris Elba possibly being James Bond. It's TOTALLY because James Bond, the fictional character, is White and Scottish, NOT because Idris Elba is black you guys. Guys. Guise pls. Meanwhile an article asking Why Can't Link Be Black gets reposted and...well you can imagine how that went. Which is especially funny to me because Link is not only a fictional character, he's also a fictional character that gets REINCARNATED EVERY GAME. A game where pretty much the only dark skinned character IS THE FUCKING BAD GUY. And then there was that one time Doctor Who was almost Idris Elba and people flipped. Because, you know, an alien being can only turn into a White British Guy every time, as opposed to ANY OTHER HUMAN ON THE PLANET. If you can't tell I've been paying pretty close attention to Black representation in media and it's just like, there isn't any. How many young black actors are you currently aware of? Maybe four or five, tops? Literally the only one I can think of off the top of my head is the kid from Chronicle. Terms like SJW get thrown around like snowballs on a winter's day now. It has no meaning, like neckbeard or literally. It's used to shut down any conversation about representation. "If you want a black/girl/gay main character, go make your own game," meanwhile those minorities are unable to even BREACH areas of technological development. STEM white boys, the least persecuted people on the planet, are worried about their "safe space" getting raided by things they aren't used to and it's so scawy ya'll hold me and my inability to make a protagonist that isn't a grizzled white guy with an assault rifle. /rantover
Speaking as a fair-weather Jew: Everybody knows the Jews run Hollywood. Everybody also knows that the Jews are a bunch of avaricious opportunists, and if there was money to be made turning James Bond into a pedophile we'd do it. What, then, is the profit motive behind the lily-white casts of nearly all Hollywood movies these days? Something Hollywood doesn't want you to know is that the United States is now somewhere between 25% and 50% of their revenues. The rest of the world - primarily Asia, partly Europe - counts for the rest. And the rest of the world - primarily Asia, partly Europe - does not want to see black people. Unless it's Will Smith. No one is sure why, exactly, but Asian audiences are totally cool with Will Smith. Anybody else? fuggedaboudit. Is it racism if you can't profit off of black people, as opposed to racist because you don't like black people? I'd say yes. But no matter how colorblind the United States gets (and it doesn't look like it is, does it?), film will get whiter and whiter and whiter so long as Hollywood depends on large Asian markets to pay for its films. Effectively, a black James Bond loses half its revenue. A black James Bond effectively loses a third of its revenue if it doubles its US revenue... and Americans are more likely to watch Larry the Cable Guy as James Bond than Idris Elba. You see the worst places for black people to travel. Hollywood sees markets. Remember, Nintendo is Japanese. Yes, I'm saying America is less racist than you think because the rest of the world is MORE racist than you think, and I recognize that it's shitty. I'd totally watch Elba play Bond; I'd watch him play Thomas Jefferson. And that's the difference - there's an outside chance for blacks in American media for consumption by Americans and it's a chance worth striving for. That's how Annie ended up black: foreign markets give two shits about christmas movies and Annie is a purely American property with no international tail. But as American audiences pay less and less attention to gigantic blockbusters...
....well, let's just say Idris has less and less chance of headlining Transformers 7 or whatever.
Okay, so what I'm hearing is that Will Smith is going to be the next James Bond. What a bummer that this is the way the industry works, but what an even greater bummer that so much of the world is racist. I'd love to see him play Bond, I thought he was the most captivating actor in the Wire. Like flagamuffin, I didn't realize that Daniel Craig was done. While I'm all for Idris Elba taking up the mantel, it would seem Craig has some gas left in the tank, no? Also, people like Limbaugh seem to think James Bond is an actual historic figure and not a fictional character. They liken it to Idris playing Thomas Jefferson etc, when it's so, so, so very different. That said, Idris as Jefferson would be interesting.
Will Smith is much too expensive and much more likely to have an opinion. The Broccolis are legendarily cheap and iron-fisted. That's probably why Craig is getting the boot - now that they've built him into a movie star they have to pay him like one and treat him like one.
You see "asian." Asians see Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, etc. And believe it or not, Asian countries generally hate each other more than they hate the US. The Cantonese word for "foreigner" means both "foreign devil" and "Japanese." All others are "foreign devil, not Japanese." The Petronas Towers were finished a month ahead of schedule because the Malaysians gave one tower to a Japanese construction crew and the other to a Korean one. They then gave a 5% bonus to whoever finished first. Fights were common but both teams worked around the clock for six weeks straight to beat the other. So when a Japanese star is cast, you just lost China, Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. Cast a Thai star and you lost Japan, China and Korea. Cast a Chinese star and you lost Japan and Korea, etc.
It's fucked up, but I've seen evidence of it. Race is a whole other thing in Asia. A number of our Chinese friends and colleagues do not seem to be sensitive to racism at all in the way that I am used to. The role of race in Chinese culture is nothing like ours in the US. But, that said, many many Americans, white and black, are terribly racist against Chinese. The US market wouldn't be cool with a Chinese James Bond.
Which is a crying goddamn shame because an ethnic-Chinese Briton furthering The Queen's interests in a newly-repatriated Hong Kong is about the only possible relevant spy story you can tell that directly involves MI-6 as anything other than a tertiary appendage of the CIA/NSA/DIA. For that matter, Goldfinger was originally based on the PRC's Nazi gold-laundering and counterfeiting in Macau, credited by many with getting the nascent nation through the lean times shortly after Mao took over. The more I think about it, the more awesome a Chinese James Bond would be - all the places of far-east intrigue that Bond movies have always loved are all about Chinese interests - Kazakhstan, Thailand, North Korea, Japan, Nigeria... all major spheres of Chinese influence in the past ten years. Cinematic as fuck without even trying. Maybe they can get Keith Carradine to play.
I can't do anything but agree with you, and commiserate to the extent I can, being trans (but white). Especially in America, race is so institutionalized, and so connected to class. As a Canadian, I had no idea how bad it was until I came here to study. I'd never, in the flesh, heard someone described as a "nr" by someone with a mouthful of vitriol. A gay, asian man, no less. I was so gobsmacked i couldn't even respond. My friend Esther, a clarinet major, was pulled over for driving while black a while ago. She's from a relatively well off family, who bought her a Lexus. The cops had her out of the car, had her parents and the insurance company on the phone just to confirm that she really was who she said she was, the name on the registration. What the fuck, man? Trans people are 400 times more likely to be murdered than average in the US, and 12 of the 16 murders of trans people in america this year were trans women of colour, the most vulnerable and at risk group of trans people. Laverne Cox and Janet Mock might make it look good, but they are at risk every time they walk down the street, not just because of their gender identity, but because of their colour. I don't know what to do.
That's interesting. I hadn't heard that they're considering someone new for Bond. I think it's a shame, but that's because I really like Daniel Craig. If he wants out, the next one might as well be black or any other thing. (Although -- hypocrisy? I was very annoyed when that TV show made Sherlock's Watson a woman. I think there's a difference between changing a character's physical appearance and changing their gender. I'll have to think about it.) I think I'd prefer, on the balance, if James Bond was consistently cast as an actor that looks like his description in the original stories -- because I'm sort of conservative when it comes to literature being adapted to other forms -- but that is much less important than having strong black actors in Hollywood. And since, as you say, there aren't just a whole lot of classic roles for black men, race-bending is the solution. In a more perfect world, there would be plenty of black actors and plenty of books about black teens/young adults for them to bring to the screen. Maybe someday. EDIT: I googled and noticed that this was a Limbaugh thing. Dude, I know. But if you spend your life being angry at things Rush Limbaugh says ... did anyone else actually say this? Limbaugh is an idiot and it doesn't do much good to get worked up about the things he says. Course I'm sure a large number of people agree with him. Maybe ranting will help. But even thinking about Limbaugh is not constructive.
Strange. You were willing to accept Sickboy in New York as Holmes, but Lucy Liu was a bridge too far? Me, I'd be cool with whoever they want Watson to be... so long as it isn't Lucy Liu. I'd rather watch Ru Paul. You do realize that Team Broccoli ran out of Fleming novels with Living Daylights in '87, right? And that at one point James Bond was driving an invisible Aston Martin across a lake while a North Korean clone fired space lasers at him? Moonraker was written in 1955 - no space in it anywhere; the eponymous weapon was an upgraded Nazi V-2. Fleming himself barely outlived JFK; when he died, Vietnam was still a police action. Shit, when Fleming died the British could still pretend to be a geopolitical force. The notting hill riots were '58. There were maybe 20,000 black people in all of England. The Commonwealth Act of '62 ensured it'd stay that way. Despite 3 more similar acts since, there are now more than a million self-identified blacks in the UK, or two percent of the population. Seems almost as improbable as shooting down a pod full of poisonous orchids during re-entry, if you ask me. I'd say the UK has earned a black Bond.
The key thing about Bond is that he's cool, stylish and quintessentially male. Elba has proven himself to be all three, in so many ways, regardless of his philogenetic expression. I made this because Elba would be awesome.
The biggest boss in your video game was black too ;) Hahah no, just joking, I 100% agree with you. Tho black people are always badass even if they are evil in the media. Indians have it even worse with always being the lame store clerks... Never read it but stuff like Ms. Marvel really gives me hope it will change tho. Relevant Idea Channel video:
Speaking of Indians, it always blew my mind that The Last Airbender (there is no movie in Ba Sing Se, etc. etc.), a movie based on a show where the protagonists are presumably Inuit, and the antagonists based on the Japanese, flipped it around so that the protagonists were white, and the Fire Nation was fucking Indian. Especially weird considering who wrote the goddamn movie
Home sweet home! When I arrived, my family and a bunch of my best friends a were welcoming me, which was really nice. Although I felt a bit ill last night, I woke up this morning feeling great and not at all jet lagged. And I've sold another veenspace poster! Today is a good day.
So someone made a Yeezus Christmas Parody and it's fucking amazing holy shit. Just...amazing. Anyways it's break and the greatest day of the year for some of you people but it's pretty much just Wednesday for me. Younger me (6-7) used to straight up hate Christmas when Ramadan didn't line up with it because it was on the lunar calendar. I had even less of a censor than I do now so I got into trouble for it whenever I felt people were bothering me asking "what did you get for Christmas". Nothing, damn, gah. Luckily I've grown out of that and can kinda appreciate the mood it puts people in, but I still get a little uneasy this time of year. Oh well. Three weeks off before school starts back up and then I have a huge project at work that I'm excited about. And I have a feeling I'll like my classes more next semester too. Till then it's videogames and movies that I need to catch up on (sorry insom). And meetin up with friends when they're done with this holiday thing that you guys are super into.I'm In It (The Chimney)
I look forward to listening to this, I've been listening to Yeezus this past week quite a lot. It's my first Kanye foray. There are aspects I really dig, mostly I love how humble he is.
Sweet Wait shit no- I would listen chronologically: The College Dropout (2004) Late Registration (2005) Graduation (2007) 808s & Heartbreak (2008) My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) Watch the Throne (2011) Yeezus (2013) Honestly you could probably skip Watch the Throne toomy first Kanye foray
Yeezus
Thanks man, I appreciate the recommendations. I dig what I'm hearing...
I don't hate it but it kinda sucks everybody just assumes you celebrate it too. Or forget that Christmas can bring shitty memories back to some people. Or the whole extra focus on consumerism. It's like that video "Santa hates poor kids" or something. You're setting up some pretty bad expectations right off the bat if you're not careful. We each got one gift for Eid Al Fitr. We were fully aware that our mom was buying it for us, and that it deviated from the norm because it was something expensive, and to appreciate that. I know some people celebrate Christmas the same way, though, so that's good.
I don't really like the Christmas holidays either. The whole season is so shallow and... mechanized. I won't complain about getting gifts, but it bothers me that we're expected to get each other stuff. Even when the person we're buying for doesn't "need" anything, we still buy him stuff because that's just what we're expected to do (Why buy people gifts for Christmas anyway? For Jesus?). So yeah, definitely the consumerism. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with Christmas (Why not buy loved ones gifts for Christmas?), but everyone going on autopilot spoils the whole season.
Mechanized. That's a great word for it. Or maybe just 'industrialized?' It's an 'economic' event now, rather than a spiritual or emotional one. The few gifts I bought this year, I bought irregardless of price. I bought them with a clear intention of making directly better the life of someone dear to me.I don't really like the Christmas holidays either. The whole season is so shallow and... mechanized.
This. I bought gifts for people when I knew exactly what I wanted to get them before hand and when I had an exact reason to get them that thing. If I didn't have those feelings about someone, that person didn't get anything. Of course, that meant that there were a lot of people in my life that didn't get anything. I don't mind, either.I bought them with a clear intention of making directly better the life of someone dear to me.
I'm with you. Luckily I'm staying with my dad (my mom is still in my hometown because of work things for her, so is staying with a former neighbour. plus my dad and I are in a hotel because the house they are building isn't livable yet) who isn't into xmas either. In fact, 3/5 of my family dislike xmas, and my brother is only into it because his wife is like, 100% xmas. The big problems for me are the consumerism for consumerism's sake, and what I call the "Enforcement of joyfulness".
I enjoy Thanksgiving far more. An 8k Turkey Trot to start the day, then I can gorge myself on food and football the rest of the day. That's it, no bullshit presents or overplayed songs.
With the worst few weeks of my life now over, I am engaging sleep mode until sometime mid-January. Also, I ended up watching Whiplash a second time in theaters and it was still amazing. Encourage everyone to check it out.
Ah shit I need to see that film I feel like it's required now that I've taken lessons with the local university's jazz instructor Also worst few weeks for you, glad that's over. Hope you're doing well. Enjoy your sleep.Also, I ended up watching Whiplash a second time in theaters and it was still amazing. Encourage everyone to check it out.
I still have 2 more weeks until I get back to school (I've been home since November 24th). I don't have a license which means I've been stuck in my house all day, waiting to finally get back! Upside: I've had a ton of time to work on personal projects.
I want to know how a book like 50 shades of gray gets turned into a movie. Like the details. Like what poor screen writer had to deal with that and what is the process like?
Her name is Kelly Marcel. She's the daughter of a well respected director Terry Marcel. She got an amazing break writing the ill-fated Terra Nova series which Spielberg picked up and from which she (very bravely) bailed when it started to be taken out of her control and steered far from her original vision, leaving her to lick her wounds and head back to a terrible job at a video store. That story in itself is fascinating. She did a bunch of (uncredited) rewrites in Hollyweird and finally had a breakthrough with the recent Saving Mr Banks. She's pretty vocal in interview, so I'm sure she'll talk about the process of adapting the story in some upcoming interview somewhere.
1. I can't wait until the Holidays are over. The best part about it are the cookies my mom and I have been making. 2. How can I fix my sleep schedule? It's to the point where I don't fall asleep before 2am and don't wake up until 11am and it's getting very old, very fast. Part of the problem is I don't have much to do during the day or at night for that matter to tire me out.
Easiest way I know is to do some physical activity. make yourself physically tired.
Problem with that right now (paging flagamuffin too) is that I have this going on which means I've gone from running 3x a week to 0, and I also don't have a gym membership at home. Guess I could do core workouts but those don't do as much for me (and are incredibly boring).
Running indoors is fine if and only if it's on a track. I really dislike treadmills and all of their ilk. Running outdoors beats everything else. Maybe it's a winter thing for me too, could be new shoes or the fact that I'm running more frequently. Either way, it's not fun. Why do you kinda hate gyms?
Well the ones I have most experience with our crowded college gyms. Thirty different kinds of weight equipment, all designed to work one single muscle cluster, all incomprehensible. Lots of people, very few of them doing anything constructive. Six square inches to do pushups. Loud and odd-smelling.
I should do that. Even on nights where I'm not using a screen prior to bed it takes me at minimum 30 minutes to actually fall asleep, unless I'm exhausted. f.lux and Sleep as Android are good ideas too.
Note there is a distinct lack of scientific evidence here but it works for me. I stay up a full 24 hours and then fall asleep at the time when I normally want to fall asleep. Then I normally find myself falling asleep around that time from then on.
Seconding coffeespoons and mk -- I built my schedule around not getting up before 11am anyway, but if you want to fix that, go for a nighttime jog or do a lot of jumping jacks and then take a hot shower. Or just lose the computer about an hour before you want to be asleep, get in bed with a book, and you'll probably crash fast.