Super Social Analysis: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and LGBT in Movies

[Ms Blue Jay]

Wha wha wha?  I don't know anything about the Capt America stuff so if you ever see an article let me know - in the meantime I will Google.

[Spartan Girl]

6 minutes ago, Ms Blue Jay said:

Wha wha wha?  I don't know anything about the Capt America stuff so if you ever see an article let me know - in the meantime I will Google.

No need for articles. Just look on the Sharon Carter tag on Tumblr. You'll see the evidence in all its glory.

[Ms Blue Jay]

Who ya gonna call? Why Ghostbusters is leading the charge for female buddy movies

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/may/01/who-ya-gonna-call-why-ghostbusters-is-leading-the-charge-for-female-buddy-movies?CMP=twt_gu

The Ghostbusters Trailer Backlash Shows Men Believe in the Power of Representation (But Only When It Applies to Them)

http://www.themarysue.com/ghostbusters-most-disliked-trailer/

The Handmaid's Tale is coming to Hulu – with a white man at the helm

It’s great news that the feminist dystopian novel will be adapted into a TV series. But why tell progressive stories onscreen if we can’t learn from them?

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/apr/30/the-handmaids-tale-hulu-tv-series-margaret-atwood-women

Edited May 1, 2016 by Ms Blue Jay

[Rick Kitchen]

Is there a particular reason why it would be inappropriate for a white man to be in charge of The Handmaid's Tale?

[Dejana]

Sexism as a marketing tool?

Tl;dr a discussion of allegations that Sony was deleting comments on the trailers from female posters who didn't slam the movie based on gender, but left up the more misogynistic ones, hoping to use the sexism narrative for publicity purposes, to turn the film into a feminist cause célèbre, and to provide an excuse if/when the movie underperforms. You can search "ghostbusters trailer deleted comments" to see other discussion about it.

[Ms Blue Jay]

18 hours ago, Rick Kitchen said:

Is there a particular reason why it would be inappropriate for a white man to be in charge of The Handmaid's Tale?

Did you read the article ?  That is actually what the article was written about.

[Rick Kitchen]

But why do they keep emphasizing that he's white?  Would it be better if a man of color was the show runner?  I'm still scratching my head.

[ChelseaNH]

It's a story about privileged people treating non-privileged people as property.  A man of color would probably have some insights that a white man could miss.

[proserpina65]

On ‎04‎/‎30‎/‎2016 at 7:26 PM, Ms Blue Jay said:

Ghostbusters drama.

Vulture :  Why the #Ghostbusters trailer is the most-hated movie trailer on YouTube: http://vult.re/1Uoc6k1

I thought it was a pretty lame trailer, but not because of gender.  Just because it was lame.

[Ms Blue Jay]

George Takei calmly dismantles all of Marvel’s excuses for its Doctor Strange casting: http://vult.re/26Sc5cZ

Edited May 4, 2016 by Ms Blue Jay

[Princess Sparkle]

My favorite part in his whole piece:
 

Quote

But there has been a long standing practice of taking roles that were originally Asian and rewriting them for white actors to play, leaving Asians invisible on the screen and underemployed as actors. This is a very real problem, not an abstract one. It is not about political correctness, it is about correcting systemic exclusion. Do you see the difference?

[Ms Blue Jay]

That's why he's the internet's sweetheart.

[icewolf]

The Jungle Book is the first live action film made of a Disney animated movie not to have a white woman as the lead. Another bonus, the lead is a POC.

[ChelseaNH]

While the lead actress might be a POC, the character she plays is not.

[Ms Blue Jay]

I assume that icewolf is speaking about Neel Sethi playing Mowgli.

[Ms Blue Jay]

Added some stuff in the Ghostbusters thread

Paul Feig sent out a statement about a New York Daily News article he was recently featured in:

A writer-comedian named Melinda Taub wrote this for Funny or Die

Edited May 9, 2016 by Ms Blue Jay

[Ms Blue Jay]

#StarringJohnCho highlights Hollywood's 'whitewashing'

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-36253081

[topanga]

23 hours ago, Ms Blue Jay said:

#StarringJohnCho highlights Hollywood's 'whitewashing'

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-36253081

Great campaign. I'd love to hear what John Cho has to say about it. But I know he's in a precarious position. He probably does have an opinion about Hollywood's treatment of Asian-American actors, but he's also been working lately and would probably like to keep it that way.

[Trini]

Jodie Foster on women in Hollywood; a few quotes:

Quote

...“They’ll make enormous movies tentpole films and they’ll be all in, kind of like a casino bet,” Foster said at Variety and Kering’s Women in Motion talk. “That’s a really dangerous bet.”

...

“Studio executives are scared period,” she said. “This is the most risk averse time that I can remember in movie history.”

In this climate of fear, executives are more likely to lean on what is familiar. “You’re going to go with the guy that looks like you,” she said.

...

Quotas in filmmaking have already been administered in countries such as Sweden, Foster says she does not support that kind of system.

“I’m worried about quotas in terms of art,” said Foster. “We’re not talking about junior executives. We’re talking about an art form.”

She added, “I’m worried that it will set back the ideas that we’re hoping for of inclusivity.”

...

“The motivation was always rape. They were uninterested in complexity, they were unable to make the transition (get inside a female character’s head),” she added.

That’s very different from the kinds of female protagonists audiences see in films directed by women, Foster said.

“I think it’s the male directors that have the problem,” she continued. “Women are used to putting themselves in other people’s bodies.”

[Julia]

Very, very funny:

Quote

I want an inverse spy flick. The spy is a woman. Her whole team is made up of diverse women. All the villains are women. There is only one man in the entire movie and he is a Strong Male Character who is like 25 and decently ripped and has a scene where he slowly steps out of a pool wearing speedos because he is Confident and In Control of His Sexuality. We see his ass when he has to tug down his pants to get at the knife strapped to his thigh. His nipples are always erect for no fucking reason.

[galax-arena]

He's tweeted before about how it's bullshit that Hollywood keeps whitewashing Asian characters. 

[ChelseaNH]

"Somewhere a male studio exec has woken up screaming in agony, and he doesn’t know why."

[Ms Blue Jay]

LOL, that's great.  I picture Matt Damon reading that and being very upset and shaking his head about how stupid we all are.

[JessePinkman]

Michael B. Jordan and possibly Lupita Nyong'o have joined the cast of Black Panther and for some reason I'm in awe in that black people are being cast in a superhero movie set in Africa. I'm coming to realize that I was absolutely STARVED for representation in this genre that I love.

[BookWoman56]

On 4/25/2016 at 0:30 AM, galax-arena said:

"I don't know whether to kiss you or spank you": a half century of fear of an unspanked woman

Galax-Arena, thank you for posting the link to the article. It's a fascinating, albeit disturbing, read. It does confirm some impressions I had gotten during childhood of various movies. Although most of these movies were made well before I was born, a few of them were shown on television while I was growing up. I remember by age 10 having decided that marriage pretty much sucked, because it meant that instead of your parents telling you what to do, your husband would now be doing that, and with no hope of you becoming old enough to leave home and do what you wanted. Not to mention the indignity and unfairness of having a husband or boyfriend who would feel free to spank you if you dared to disagree with him or think for yourself. But even though the movies for the most part were before my time, I vividly remember first-run TV episodes from my childhood in which a wife, girlfriend or daughter age 18 or over would either be spanked or threatened with a spanking.

As an adult, I try to look at those in their historical context. It makes some sense that many of them were made shortly after WW2, when many women had entered the workforce during the war years and then were displaced by men returning after the war ended. Because many of these women had become more independent, I can see that some men would not like the idea of their wife earning money and not automatically doing precisely as they were told. So it's not surprising that movies from that time would feature the theme of a wife who is too independent, whose husband finally spanks her to re-establish his authority, or daughters who must be spanked first by their fathers and then their boyfriends/husbands to make sure they remain submissive and docile. In some sense, many of these movies served as propaganda to encourage women to relinquish all independence they had gained during wartime, so as not to damage their husband's ego. Because if women don't kowtow to their fathers and husbands, the sky will fall.

I think what bothers me the most with the scenes included in the clip is that in so many of them, the spanking is treated as either no big deal or it's played for laughs with an audience cheering on the husband. And implicit in the spanking is that women have no right to autonomy and must be punished in humiliating ways to remind them of that. I could understand the comedic aspect a bit if these were portrayed as consensual B&D, that both parties wanted. Consensual B&D is fine because it's consensual. But non-consensual spanking of an adult woman is striking someone without her consent, without even the bogus justification that you are a parent disciplining a child who has misbehaved. The act equates women with children who must be controlled and punished when disobedient (not that I approve of the concept as applied to children, either, because from what I've seen of parents spanking or striking their children in public, it's less about the parent wanting the child to learn how to act and more about the parent being angry and spanking/hitting being a way to release that anger). Reading the article and looking at the various film clips it contained, it's no wonder that so many men grew up believing that it was perfectly okay to spank their wives, and from that it's not a huge leap of logic to think that it's perfectly okay to inflict other violence on women.

This also ties to something I've noticed in various movies: if a young male does something a bit reckless and possibly dangerous against his parents' wishes, the usual reaction is the father grudgingly admitting that the son is standing up for himself and old enough to make his own decisions. A young female who does something similar is punished and told she's being willful, and that the father can't wait until she is married so her husband can keep her under control. I had vented some time back about the John Wayne movie McLintock!, in which the daughter is spanked by a man who disapproves of her enjoying a ride with another man. I had forgotten that Wayne's character, the father, does nothing to prevent this guy from spanking his daughter and in fact hands him what is described as a small shovel to assist him with the spanking. WTFF? A shovel, no matter how small, is generally a wood and metal implement capable of causing serious injury. So it's okay for a father to encourage a guy to hit his daughter with a tool that could possibly kill her, because she enjoyed singing during a wagon ride with a man she wasn't engaged to? In another movie, whose title I cannot recall, there are two daughters, both old enough to marry, one of whom insists on doing as she wishes while the other has zero personality and does exactly what her father tells her. Of course, the compliant daughter is the one who gets the man she wants and is held up as a shining example of what a good daughter should be, while the other daughter is spanked by her father, with the butler handing him a slipper to use, and then the father decides he really needs to spank his wife because she is foolish enough to read horoscopes (or something similar) and has raised a daughter who wants her own way.

It's just, so many of these plot lines are just a blatant double standard, with events that would be seen as ludicrous or horrific if the genders are switched. If a wife in one of those movies had tried to spank her husband, especially in a public setting, she'd have been regarded as horrible, whereas the husband doing it just means he's being a good husband. I recognize and am glad that attitudes have changed, but these movies produce some serious cognitive dissonance for me. I don't approve of censorship, but jeebus, if there were a button I could press to destroy every single physical copy and all online versions, I'd be tempted to do it just so nobody ever watches them again. I realize that to some extent they simply reflect the attitudes of their era, but nobody needs to be shown repeatedly that spanking your wife or girlfriend to punish her is a good or normal thing to do. I cannot fathom how many women went through this bullshit because their husbands decided it was fine to beat their wives, because hey, it totally worked for that guy in the movie.

[Ms Blue Jay]

I hate how the negativity around this remake isn't going away.  Rather, it might be getting stronger.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/the-sexist-outcry-against-the-ghostbusters-remake-gets-louder/483270/?utm_source=atltw

[ChelseaNH]

Guess I'll just have to go see it multiple times.

[kiddo82]

People are dumb.  I mean, people can like or not like whatever they want and I'm certainly not telling anyone how he should feel, however, if you don't want to see the movie then don't seen it.  (I'm not 100% sold I want to see it in all honesty).  It's not rocket science.  We're talking about grown ass adults spending productive daylight hours whining over a movie about scientists who drive around in a hearse and trap ghosts in tiny boxes.  That says way more about them than it does about anything else. 

[Rick Kitchen]

I haven't seen either movie, but apparently in the Neighbors movies, Dave Franco's character is gay, and in the second one, his boyfriend asks him to marry him.

[xaxat]

Asian-American Actors Are Fighting for Visibility. They Will Not Be Ignored.

Quote

It’s never been easy for an Asian-American actor to get work in Hollywood, let alone take a stand against the people who run the place. But the recent expansion of Asian-American roles on television has paradoxically ushered in a new generation of actors with just enough star power and job security to speak more freely about Hollywood’s larger failures.

And their heightened profile, along with an imaginative, on-the-ground social media army, has managed to push the issue of Asian-American representation — long relegated to the back burner — into the current heated debate about Hollywood’s monotone vision of the world.

[Ambrosefolly]

On May 13, 2016 at 6:02 PM, JessePinkman said:

Michael B. Jordan and possibly Lupita Nyong'o have joined the cast of Black Panther and for some reason I'm in awe in that black people are being cast in a superhero movie set in Africa. I'm coming to realize that I was absolutely STARVED for representation in this genre that I love.

Hopefully it will do for him what Deadpool did for Ryan Reynolds.

 

4 hours ago, xaxat said:

Asian-American Actors Are Fighting for Visibility. They Will Not Be Ignored.

Too bad there isn't any material out there to cast Asian Americans/Asians in. Oh wait, there are tons of things. manga, The Last Airbender, Asian History, probably other things they could attempt. Maybe Hollywood can produce a movie about Genghis Khan that doesn't have John Wayne playing him. I think sci-fi/fantasy fans are unfairly labeled as racist, when I think they are purist: the audience won't take to Scarlett Johansson as Motoka Kusanagi anymore than they did to Michael B Jordan as the Johnny Storm (instead of a new version of the Human Torch, with a different name). I like SJ and wish her the best, but I think her casting will hurt Ghost in a Shell, like it did for the Last Airbender.

[ChelseaNH]

17 hours ago, Ambrosefolly said:

Oh wait, there are tons of things.

Essentially, anything.  There's a case to be made for accuracy in historical dramas, but that's the only possible exception I can think of.

Edited May 26, 2016 by ChelseaNH

[xaxat]

One would think so. 

Yet Hollywood somehow managed to take the true story of a group of Asian MIT blackjack players and made a movie about white people.

[JBC344]

Or you could just cast Asian actors in any "American story".  You know treat them like they are actual people. 

[Popples]

13 hours ago, JBC344 said:

Or you could just cast Asian actors in any "American story".  You know treat them like they are actual people. 

[JBC344]

On ‎5‎/‎23‎/‎2016 at 0:22 AM, Rick Kitchen said:

I haven't seen either movie, but apparently in the Neighbors movies, Dave Franco's character is gay, and in the second one, his boyfriend asks him to marry him.

In the first movie his character is straight, but the producers talked about wanting to add a gay character and they decided to have Dave's character come out in the 2nd movie or in the interim between both movies.

[methodwriter85]

The backstory was that Dave's character was secretly fooling around with other frat brothers, and after college, came out as gay. I mean, it DOES happen, so whatever. I still thought it just felt gratuitous, but whatever.

One story I'm dying to see: a straight guy and a gay guy embark on a relationship, and actually make it work, without the straight guy deciding that he can't do gay stuff. Like a male version of Kissing Jessica Stein, but with them actually going for it at the end. I feel like sexually fluid stories tend to be ignored (especially on the guy side)  because to admit sexually fluidity would be saying, to some people, that someone can "choose" to be gay or "choose" to be straight. (Which isn't what that means at all, but you know politics.)

There was one story I liked a lot called Angels of Sex, where a guy with a girlfriend embarks on a sexual attraction to a guy, and they embark on a polyamorous relationship. (And

Spoiler

it works in the end, with the girlfriend falling in love with her boyfriend's boyfriend as well, and them being happy in the end.)

I feel like that type of stuff tends to be pretty much absent from American gay cinema. I mean, 95 percent of the time, the straight guy you have a crush on won't do anything with you (or will but instantly regrets it), but sometimes...sometimes that fantasy does happen. (But there's a lot of work that goes with it.)

Edited May 29, 2016 by methodwriter85

[Luckylyn]

Coffee Date

Todd's brother decides to play a prank where Todd thinks he's meeting a woman for a blind date but his brother sends a guy named Kelly.  They end up really bonding.  Todd decides to prank his brother back by taking Kelly home and making look like they hooked up.  This has the consequence of the brother blabbing to anyone who would listen and everyone believing Todd is gay no matter how much he protests.  He forms a close friendship with Kelly which further confuses the issue because people take their spending time together as proof of Todd being gay.

Spoiler

People keep pointing out to Todd that he fits the stereotype people have of being gay and starts to wonder why everyone is so certain he is gay.  Plus, he has strong feelings for his gay friend.   He decides to seduce Kelly to figure out his sexuality.  The results are mixed because he's certain he's straight but hurting over ruining his friendship because Kelly was in love with him.  Todd ends up with the female roommate of Kelly and Kelly hooks up with Todd's brother who reveals he's gay towards the end.  Todd's brother isn't really likable so I wasn't thrilled about that.  I wish they had given Kelly another option for love interest.

  Movies where a straight guy explores his sexuality are rare.   Men being sexually fluid is something that doesn't get explored enough.  People have this idea that men are straight or gay while people seem to be more accepting of women being sexually fluid.

[Luckylyn]

I just remembered there's a movie called Hump Day about two straight friends who decide to make a porno

[Archery]

I was watching theatrical preview of The Free State of Jones, starring Matthew McConaughey, and I found myself getting increasingly annoyed.  After a bit, it occurred to me that I did not want to see yet another white savior film. What I really wondered was, What if they told the story from the point of view of the (so far) unnamed black guy who is in the background?  It just aggravated me.  (It's all y'all's fault.)

[AimingforYoko]

3 hours ago, Archery said:

I was watching theatrical preview of The Free State of Jones, starring Matthew McConaughey, and I found myself getting increasingly annoyed.  After a bit, it occurred to me that I did not want to see yet another white savior film. What I really wondered was, What if they told the story from the point of view of the (so far) unnamed black guy who is in the background?  It just aggravated me.  (It's all y'all's fault.)

My suggestion is wait for The Birth Of A Nation. (2016, not, I repeat not 1915)

[Rick Kitchen]

Free State of Jones is not a white savior film.  It is about white farmers rebelling against the rich planters.  The slaves are not the central point of the movie.  This is true history, by the way. The real Newt Knight eventually married a former slave, and his children from his first marriage married the slave's children, in violation of Mississippi's anti-misgenation laws.  But Knight was such a hero in Jones County after his rebellion, the state didn't push it.

[xaxat]

Did AMC conspire to push Houston’s only Spanish-language movie theater out of business?

Quote

If you want to watch a movie in Spanish at a theater, however, you’re out of luck. There isn’t a single Spanish-language cinema in city limits.

Viva Cinemas tried to change that. When it opened in May 2013, the eight-screen movie theater showed only movies dubbed in Spanish or with Spanish subtitles. It had a mix of Hollywood films and movies imported from other countries, and was popular with many Spanish-speaking locals. But just six months after it opened, the theater closed its doors.

Now, Viva is suing movie theater company AMC under an antitrust law. Their lawsuit alleges that the cinema conglomerate conspired with movie distributors to push Viva out of business.

I don't know if what AMC did meets a legal standard, but the common sense answer appears to be "yes".

[Archery]

17 hours ago, Rick Kitchen said:

Free State of Jones is not a white savior film.  It is about white farmers rebelling against the rich planters.  The slaves are not the central point of the movie.  This is true history, by the way. The real Newt Knight eventually married a former slave, and his children from his first marriage married the slave's children, in violation of Mississippi's anti-misgenation laws.  But Knight was such a hero in Jones County after his rebellion, the state didn't push it.

That's kinda the point. 

[Ms Blue Jay]

Archery, saw a tweet about this today:

Quote

‏@BobbyBigWheel

Movie categories 2016:
1. Superhero
2. Matthew McConaughey saves black people
3. Matthew McConaughey saves gay people
4. Sports documentary

Edited May 31, 2016 by Ms Blue Jay

[Rick Kitchen]

3 hours ago, Archery said:

That's kinda the point. 

 

I don't understand the point you're making.

[Archery]

I mean: I want to see movies about the slaves not the white farmers.  I want to see movies where white people aren't the be-all and end-all of the story.  I want to see movies where the second black guy from the left IS the story, because his story is interesting.  I want to see the background people in the foreground for once.  I want Hollywood to figure out that historical events do not necessarily have to be viewed through white people's eyes to be noteworthy.  I want movies where the black people (or Asian people, or Latino people) are the heroes, not the sidekicks, or the ones to be saved, or the wallpaper against which white people get to stand out and do their thing. 

[Rick Kitchen]

And that's all well and good, but that's not what this movie is about.  White people have history, too.

[AimingforYoko]

I think the point is that Free State of Jones is frequently the type of movie that gets made as opposed to something like The Birth Of A Nation (2016, not 1915. I can't stress that strongly enough) not that they should change the story to suit whatever ox needs to be gored. Making the movie is not a problem, if there's a balance. As of now, there is not.

[Rick Kitchen]

And therefore Free State of Jones should not have been made because there aren't enough black-themed movies?