Posts tagged racism
Hello, Tailor
What I recall from the Harold and Kumar movies is my struggle with the advertisers. There was all this racial humor in the movie, and the advertising department wanted to say “Starring the Asian guy in American Pie, and the Indian guy from Van Wilder…” and they did go with that, and they submitted that to me for approval, and I said, “I don’t like it.” They asked me why, and I explained it to them, and that was tricky because it’s difficult explaining to my own representatives why that didn’t jibe with me, because everyone kind of felt like it was keeping in tone with the movie. And I said, “I don’t like it. We’re poking fun at racism in the movie all the time, but it puts the audience on the wrong side of the racism joke.” So they were playing with the wording a little bit in the edits, and they kept coming up with versions to make me happy, but they were essentially the same thing. I finally said, “You are not going to make me happy. You’re dancing around it, and you’re clearly attached to this idea, and I want you to know that no version of this idea will make me happy. And if you’re afraid that I won’t show up to do promotion because of this bitterness, you can rest assured that that’s not true. I consider promoting a movie part of my duties, and I will show up nevertheless. But you can either use this campaign and know that I’m unhappy, or you can change it and know that I’m happy. That’s it. Stop trying.” And eventually they went with it, and it’s one of those things where I look back and I’m very proud of the movie, but that’s the thing I remember.
John Cho, in a great, long-read 2009 interview on the UCLA Asia Institute’s Asia Pacific Arts website. Thanks to radiophile for the link.
This quote strikes me as particularly relevant in the aftermath of the STID press tour and John’s comments. He’s always thinking about the portrayal of race in media and culture because it hits home. And he’s a total BAMF for consistently pointing out when people get it wrong.
(via withthepilot)
(via gracierocket)
In the past few days, there have been at least 162 Islamophobic hate attacks in the UK, and nine mosques have been targeted with kives, petrol bombs and graffiti. That’s a 900% increase, according to the tracking group Tell Mama UK. Petrol-bomb attacks on mosques are not reported as terrorism, and nor are individual acts of anti-Muslim violence; we are expected to understand this quasi-organised campaign of fear as something else, as a ‘backlash’.
(via waxjism)
sherlock-has-got-the-blue-box:
everythingthelighttoucheskingdom:
sabrina-is-at-221b-bakerstreet:
LOOK AT THIS POOR OPPRESSED WOMAN AND WHAT HER COUNTRY IS MAKING HER DO.
Even in her eyes it says “help me”.
This is why we have to stop these misogynistic societies.
I’m sorry but no. I acknowledg that this is terrible, but don’t you think we should fix our own countries mishaps before we deal in other countries affairs? We have corrupt businesses, crime, poverty, homelessness, and believe it or not starvation.
Does anyone even know the threat that walmart has to this country?!
I hope you’re being ironic ouo
everything about this is horrible tbh
Isn’t that Benedict Cumberbatch?
That’s Benedict Cumberbatch.
Guys that’s obviously Benedict Cumberbatch.
Oh my god I’ve never imagined this situation
IVE BE EN LAGUHING FOR THE PAST 500 YEARS
OMGGG YOU GUYS
#when gifs are taken out of context
I was going to reblog this b/c it is an awesome gif of benedict as sherlock and then i read the comments *dies laughing*
Benedict Cumberbatch = Oppressed Muslim woman.
(via typhonatemybaby)
17 notes &
A new comedy for E4 is looking for Oriental women to play workers in a sweatshop. Payment details: expenses only.
Star Trek Into Darkness: Too many dicks on the Enterprise.
Into Darkness shows more racial diversity among cameos from alien species than it does among human characters in main speaking roles. Worse still, iconic Star Trekvillain Khan Noonien Singh was recast as Benedict Cumberbatch, possibly the whitest man on the planet.In Khan’s original role, he was super-intelligent, super-strong, the head of a genetically engineered master race—and brown. In other words, the opposite of the usual racial stereotypes one saw in mid-20th century “foreign” or “exotic” villains. Whitewashing Khan into being an posh-sounding Englishman reinforces the message sent out by Kirk, Spock, and the morally ambiguous Admiral Marcus: Good or evil, everyone in power is a white male. Suddenly, the awkwardness surrounding one of John Cho’s publicity interviews makes sense. “Who is your favourite villain?” he is asked. “Ricardo Montalban,” he answers. “He was badass. And a man of color, I might add.” Nervous laughter. Next question, please.
Representation matters. Star Trek is proof of that. Kirk and Uhura famously shared US TV’s first interracial kiss, and Uhura went on to inspire the first black female astronaut to go into space. When Nichelle Nichols was thinking of quitting the show, Martin Luther King, Jr. felt that her position as a role model was so important that he personally asked her to reconsider staying on. [READ MORE]
If media covered America the way we cover foreign cultures
Yet another massacre has occurred in the historically war-torn region of the Southern United States – and so soon after the religious festival of Easter.
Brian McConkey, 27, a Christian fundamentalist militiaman living in the formerly occupied territory of Alabama, gunned down three men from an opposing tribe in the village square near Mobile, the capitol, over a discussion that may have involved the rituals of the local football cult. In this region full of heavily-armed local warlords and radical Christian clerics, gun violence is part of the life of many.
Many of the militiamen here are ethnic Scots-Irish tribesmen, a famously indomitable mountain people who have killed civilized men – and each other – for centuries. It appears that the wars that started on the fields of Bannockburn and Sterling have come to America.
As the sun sets over the former Confederate States of America, one wonders – can peace ever come to this land?
(Source: ericgarland.co, via leupagus)
Donald Glover talking about the comments he received during his campaign to be the next Spider-Man (x)
“I was talking about it with Dan Eckman, who directed my Bonfire video. Can you imagine that trailer? That would be dope. Like it makes sense… a poor black kid in Queens. Like it just fits.”
(Source: halemcjoel, via eleveninches)
As unbelievable as [White Dude Super Detective (WDSD)] characters are, they would become infinitely more so if their race or gender were changed. In The Mentalist, WDSD Patrick Jane once grifted clients as a fake psychic, but now works as a hard-to-control resource for the California Bureau of Investigations. What if the Jane character were a Latino ex-grifter? Would his arrogance and propensity for sneaking into suspect’s homes and accusing wealthy businessmen of impropriety read as quirky and charming? Would anyone believe that a police force would allow such behavior? Could the Scotland Yard of fantasy be down with a coke-addicted black Sherlock—no matter how clever? The San Francisco police department abides Adrian Monk’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, as the FBI allows Perception’s Dr. Daniel Pierce to assist on cases, despite his unmedicated schizophrenia and paranoia, which results in hallucinations. Could a black woman be cast in those roles to the same effect? I submit, that even in the fictional worlds of literature and television, race and gender matter. Belief can only be suspended so far. And this archetype is reliant on power that comes with white maleness in American society.
Tamara Winfrey Harris | Privilege And The White Dude Super-Detective (via trollny-stark)
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(via leupagus)
In 2013. Directed by Eli Roth, who said:
“So I wrote about these student activists who want to save these un-contacted tribes in the Amazon… They chain themselves to trees and protest and stream it and hash-tag, and it works… Then on their way home, their plane crashes. And the very people they save are like ‘Ah, food – that’s great!’ It’s like a free lunch, and they are brought back into the fold of absolutely barbaric, primitive man. People that have had no contact with the outside world.
So when we shot it, I wanted to film somewhere that was really, really, really in the Amazon. Really, authentically off the grid. We scouted in the summer-time and went up the river for hours and hours and found this village where there was no electricity, no running water, grass huts. Ten people in a shack. And it looked incredible; it looked like a village from another time, so we asked if we could film there. But I was told that we have to tell them what a movie is because they have no idea. They’ve never seen one. They’ve never even seen a television. So they went back with a television and a generator and showed the village Cannibal Holocaust, which I couldn’t believe. And the villagers – thank god – thought it was a comedy. The funniest thing that they’d ever seen. And they wanted to play cannibals in the movie. So we had the entire village acting in the film. And they speak Quechua – which is like another language from another time.”
I don’t have much commentary, but I want you to pay close attention to the coded language he uses. You might think “this is inappropriate” or “this is rude” or “this is racially insensitive,” but let’s not beat around the bush. This is what white supremacy looks like in 2013 — the idea that a group of people not living by Western standards are automatically “primitive savages.”
The mere fact that he was taken in by an indigenous village, unharmed, and decided to turn around and portray the people who opened their home to him as cannibalistic savages is a disturbing effort to create colonial propaganda. The fact that he listened to a current language spoken by an existing people and called it “another language from another time” proves that he doesn’t view them as real, equal human beings, but as a concept to be exploited for a cheap film.
I’m done.
I really wish eli roth was dead and have done so for years
there should be vicious, criminal repercussions for anyone fucking with indigenous people. what if he infected the entire village with viruses incubated for centuries in cities? what if they left foreign funguses, bacteria and molds behind? why isnt “first contact” like this criminalized and controlled? who the fuck let him do this?
“It is a pity the young Pi was not nominated There’s not much you can do. He’s an Indian actor and nobody knows him so he was easily overlooked.
With peer voting, people will vote for their friends or based on their impressions. He’s a newcomer and we often said he had never acted before—that’s a disadvantage to getting nominated. But I do think his performance was the purest performance.”
Taiwanese director Ang Lee noting Hollywood’s tendency to overlook Asian actors to a Chinese radio station. Ang Lee was disappointed that Suraj Sharma was not nominated for Best Actor for his performance in The Life of Pi. Lee added that he felt Irfan Khan should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and that Zhang Ziyi was not nominated either for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, nor were any actors nominated for Slumdog Millionaire.
What’s a guy gotta do to get an Oscar? Here’s some trivia about Sharma’s work on the film, from FirstPost.com.
- Sharma beat out 4,000 other applicants (Ang Lee decided from the start the role would not be whitewashed.)
- Sharma had never acted prior to this so Ang Lee assigned him a pile of homework and made him act scenes from Teneesse Williams and other playwrights just for practice.
- Sharma didn’t know how to swim when he was cast for the role. When he first started out he could only hold his breath for 14 seconds. In the end he was able to go for one minute and a half.
- Sharma spent most of the movie filming in a pool emoting in front of a blue screen to an invisible tiger.
- Sharma lost 20% of his body weight for the role, eating a diet that mostly consisted of tuna fish, just like his character, so his ribs would show.
- Sharma cut himself up frequently while working on the boat and used those injuries in his acting. He would allow himself to get flipped along with the boat.
- The production was banned from speaking the Sharma. Ang Lee and Sharma agreed that he would not to talk to other people for almost two months so he would understand what isolation was like.
1. This kid is badass.
2. When white actors like Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio do stuff like lose 20% of their body weight or cut themselves and keep acting everyone cheers uproariously.
3. It is weirdly dismissive when films about characters of color get nominated but their actors do not. Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Slumdog Millionaire, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Last Emperor, etc.
4. As FirstPost points out, a lot of the Oscar snubbed actors that people are talking about like Leonardo DiCaprio have plenty of other opportunities to star in other big movies. When is the next big project for an actor of South Asian descent coming up?
(via racebending)
