Joys of political correctness

[zlogdan]

Wil Wheaton in a "moment of clarity"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFXq3EQZqJg

Star Wars creative member has her own moment of "good hate"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RnGijM3xJU

[zlogdan]

Ladies and gentlemen, they attack again!


The actor who is not deaf cannot play a deaf character:
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainme...0Nick%20Andros.

Grease canceled:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nowflakes.html

[EverKing]

Sorry to circle back a bit but I just wanted to say that after our discussion on Dune casting and looking at it more completely, I agree that there really should be more Arab/Middle-Eastern representation in the cast. I like the diversity they included for Fremen as a whole but the lack of that Arab core in its entirety is really disconcerting. Thanks to HS for calling that lack of appropriate representation to my attention.

[zlogdan]

I leave here an extremely well-written article by Brad Torgensen where he comments on the puppies episode.

https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com...y/sad-puppies/

I know that it is possible someone here will enjoy going through it and scrutinize the text in its small details so I must say that any comments trying to debunk the text are already answered in the same text. As we say "hope is the last to die" ( I offer a lollipop for those who get this reference ).

[zlogdan]

Yes, exactly right, since he self egged his face so thoroughly, instead of relish, I prefer ketchup on him.

Water melons taste good in the Winter . I will give kudos for those who get the reference.

[Heresiologist]

Yes, exactly right, since he self egged his face so thoroughly, instead of relish, I prefer ketchup on him.

[zlogdan]

Ahhh, Brad Torgensen. You disrelish him too, don't you? Not surprising at all.

[Heresiologist]

You know that some of this stuff is probably just made up?

Quite possibly by someone or something, with an agenda...

Made up or misrepresented? Misinformed or disinformed? Agenda or Agendas? Let's have a look.

Well, to be specific ... it is mainly the Religious Reich...

From what I saw, the most prominent face and voice of right wing attacks on Cardi B's WAP was that of Ben Shapiro.

Candace Owens probably comes second--seeing as she ended up in a WAP sparked online feud with Cardi B that also led to an attack on Cardi for interviewing Joe Biden.

Third position looks like a tie between James Bradley and DeAnna Lorraine. Bradley was the only one to bring his faith into the conflict. Despite that, it's a matter of minutes to find out he's a politician who prioritizes being a successful businessman over promoting his faith.

It's not hard to find examples of Shapiro, Lorraine or Owens railing against political correctness. Looks more like the controversy, at least in terms of media attention, is mainly from people who like to attack political correctness. Saying it's mostly religious people seems misleading.

There is a fundamental difference between disliking PIV sex and calling it "rape".

There's also an important difference between the word against (which I did use) and the word dislike (which I didn't). Seems to me like a rather fundamentally misleading response to what I said.

For some reason I always thought the PMRC came from the Republicans, but I only later knew that she is the wife of Al Gore.

Tipper Gore, though probably its most public face, was a co-founder of the PMRC. Maybe it's just the confusing construction, but that sentence sure looks like it's trying to say the PMRC came solely from Tipper. Good thing the link says different.

Anyway, holding a completely one sided view of a famously bipartisan organization, apparently for more than a decade, doesn't exactly build trust in a person's discernment.

His wife is black by the way. And no, unlike many of his detractors think, being married to a black woman does make him "a non-racist".

Marrying a black woman means a man can't be racist against Asians, Indigenous, Jews etc? Is this some new variant of the Magic Negro trope?

And again, it's not hard to find black people writing online about their spouse's racism. Additionally, Lovecraft married a Jew and it didn't make him anywhere close to a non-racist.

Also, Ibram X Kendi, a professor and historian of race in the US, says there's no such thing as a non-racist, that there's only racists and anti-racists. I'm pretty suspicious of binary constructs like that, but I expect the man has thought longer and harder on the subject than Brad (I'm foolish enough to call the Hugos an affirmative action award in the year a black lady wins) Torgensen.

The University of Connecticut offered counseling to students upset at ‘even the thought of’ a Ben Shapiro speech.

Alternatively, that's a university counseling department doing its job by offering to speak with anybody riled up, or anxious, about an event bringing a controversial figure onto the campus.

But maybe it's preferable that something happens like when I was at university and Andrea Dworkin had a speaking engagement. That event led to all kinds of confrontations, shouting matches, shoving, threats of violence, and somebody or somebodies trying to burn down an event promoting banner hung against the wall of a university building. Good times.

The national review site cites the sources.

The National Review's source is another National Review article and its source is Ben Shapiro, a party to the controversy. The writer didn't bother to reach out to the university for comment.

Also, the "source" article mentions in passing that U of C, Berkeley did the same thing when Shapiro was due to speak there. It does not mention that counseling was also offered to conservative students worried by the possibility antifa members might show up.

[zlogdan]

Alright, the "ineluctably male" part is not something you'd say. Old Marvel comics style No-Prize to those who get the reference.

Yeah, if you don't have a dog you can always hunt with the help of a cat. With no eye washer at hand you may use sunglasses.

[Heresiologist]

Regarding Liet-Kynes, I think only the strictest of Herbert's readers would have a problem with the current casting. Reading the character in the novel there is nothing about the character that changes with gender--his/her funciton in the story remains unchanged.

Agreed.

The argument that the Fremen are meant to be strictly Arab doesn't stand examination and therefore the complaint that Fremen should be Arab actors is also a weak one. Their background goes well beyond Muslim tradition and considering the 20k year gap we can likewise infer they are no longer strictly Arab. I think the casting of the Fremen--being descended from wanderers and obviously having means within their culture to assimilate outsiders--as a mix of people of varying backgrounds is the right approach. As such, I don't see a casting problem in the forthcoming film. It is a fiction that is as far in our future as we are in the future of humanity during the last glacial maximum. Just because the original author used certain cultures, languages, and religions as inspirational basis for the those found in the book does not mean the people existing within them will adhere to our limited view of what they are today.

Agreed, but until we're in the year 9595 and can make Dune as a reality show with appropriate ghola representation for the Duncan Idahos, the current zeitgeist matters when it comes to big studio spectacles.

Parts of the movie were shot in Arab countries. It's a given some Arabs are going to ask about the casting.

And no amount of sciffy pedantry (which, btw, is often my wont to enjoy) about how, for instance, Herbert was significantly inspired by the exploits of the non-Arabs in The Sabres of Paradise, is going to change the fact a lot of people in the here and now are inevitably going to think of Arabs when they see the show. Again, it's a foregone conclusion questions about casting will arise.

Finally, it is my completely subjective sense that were I able to make us a Herbert Ghola, he would think it a grand idea for the new movie to honour the Arab culture (that partly, but quite obviously, inspired his epic) by casting an Arab or two into significant roles.

[Heresiologist]

Ruined has been used as "sarcasm".

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt a statement like the following isn't something you might post in here:

They attack again! Dune director joins the patrol, forces ineluctably male Liet-Kynes to transition to female: link-to-somebody-complaining

Alright, the "ineluctably male" part is not something you'd say. Old Marvel comics style No-Prize to those who get the reference.

[zlogdan]

And after all the Fremen colony is perhaps the most adapted and badass one in the Dune universe.

[EverKing]

Indeed. Dune only cares about the structures of cultures, including their religion(s) where appropriate, but is not examining them per se. Any and all are used, modified, merged, and essentially "tooled up" to the underlying survival-of-the-fittest theme.

Agreed. Herbet used syncreticism as the model of social-religious evolution over the 20,000 years between him and the events of Dune. The Fremen, while appearing Arab on the barest surface, are explicity described as being decended from the "Zen-Sunni Wanderers," a clearly syncretic culture used by Herbert as a shorthand template to develop a cultural history rather than commentary on those histories and cultures.

I am surprised it's not a discussion of how the new Dune movie was ruined because "political correctness" changed the character of Liet Kynes from male to female, thus doing irreparable damage to Papa Herbert's grand tale. Really though, probably only a matter of time.

Anyway, regardless of whether the article's author understood Dune the book, Dune the movie's casting problem was easily foreseen. It should have been trivially easy for the studio to avoid.

Then again, so far the "protests" amount to little more than a handful of web articles from nerds and policy wonks whose influence is absolutely dwarfed just by that of Dune's co-star Zendaya, never mind the PR that the studio and eager sci-fi and big studio spectacle fans will provide.

All that said, I would agree that Dune the book is critical of the saviour trope. Lynch's movie, though, is all in on it.

---

Later update: further inquiry has revealed the twitters hold a lot more people pointing out the casting question. Again, though, studio should have seen it coming. The way it's played out it's looking a bit like everybody, except the people who the story is most likely to evoke, got a part in the show. I would also note some of the people saying there's a casting problem, still say they are excited by the show.

Regarding Liet-Kynes, I think only the strictest of Herbert's readers would have a problem with the current casting. Reading the character in the novel there is nothing about the character that changes with gender--his/her funciton in the story remains unchanged.

The argument that the Fremen are meant to be strictly Arab doesn't stand examination and therefore the complaint that Fremen should be Arab actors is also a weak one. Their background goes well beyond Muslim tradition and considering the 20k year gap we can likewise infer they are no longer strictly Arab. I think the casting of the Fremen--being descended from wanderers and obviously having means within their culture to assimilate outsiders--as a mix of people of varying backgrounds is the right approach. As such, I don't see a casting problem in the forthcoming film. It is a fiction that is as far in our future as we are in the future of humanity during the last glacial maximum. Just because the original author used certain cultures, languages, and religions as inspirational basis for the those found in the book does not mean the people existing within them will adhere to our limited view of what they are today.

I think the criticism towards Dune exemplifies how it is possible to bring wrong interpretations about anything. When the "cause" is just. <= Sarcasm

Absolutely

[zlogdan]

I think the criticism towards Dune exemplifies how it is possible to bring wrong interpretations about anything. When the "cause" is just. <= Sarcasm

[zlogdan]

Ruined has been used as "sarcasm".