A Wrinkle in Time Salt - AKA "why is the main character black?"

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Jubileus said:
This one'll be a slow burn. The production is led by a director who clearly has gone into the film with something of an agenda. From the Entertainment Weekly interview bit (archive):

Also:

Additionally:

And get this: the not-either one is Oprah.

I do have to wonder what executive decisions went into this. I hope they didn't see the list of titles and go "yay we even get sequels if this doesn't totally suck"; Wrinkle is relatively light on the Christian iconography and eschatology compared to what comes after it, but we're already talking about a book that openly quotes Bible verse.

The best thing might be for it to quietly fizzle. At least one thing going for Disney is that Madeline L'Engle is dead so she can't quip about this one (following the last attempt at an adaptation back in 2003 an interviewer asked her "did the film meet your expectations?"; her response was "Yes. I expected it to be bad, and it was.").
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Let her have it. White people can read and have the book.

Make all the characters twerking Oprahs in CGI for the hood rats so they can experience it, too.
 
Zebedee said:
Are they taking the piss? Whats next on the "First time a black person ticks off another box on the SocJus checklist?", the first black person to start sending out anthrax packages?

Why do libtards constantly try to make out the small things like this as gigantic fucking events, as if they compare to the actual greats who just happen to be black?
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I'm just spitballing here but I think it goes something like:
[:autism:]The Man kept the niggos down for so long, that this was the first time a black woman was ALLOWED to do X (because WHY ELSE would they have not done it yet), therefore it is a big deal--attention MUST be called to it so that people know black people are NOW allowed to do X so that more of them will do X. Virtue? Virtue? A-VIRTUE?! Where are you, virtue?[/:autism:]
 
R.A.E.L. said:
I mean, the book cover even shows that Meg is white but whatever. This feels a lot like the whole black Hermoine discourse.
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Sure seems that way. Anyone who speaks negatively about it will be beat back down.

friedshrimp said:
Why is it that some of these people are incapable of liking fantasy series unless it stars people of the same race as them? Or that they're incapable of writing/creating settings with characters outside their race? It's mind-boggling.
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Well whatshername tried with The Hunger Games. Katniss was ambiguously olive right? But people were upset with the casting regardless even though olive skin casts a pretty wide net to begin with. Trying to make a character like that just causes everyone to argue even more over it. The race of characters has gotten stupidly important now to the effect that the debate can overshadow everything else about them.

If a character isn't explicitly described they could look like anyone.

I'm actually not very familiar with A Wrinkle in Time. I did read several of The Dark Tower books though. And I could have sworn someone points out that Roland looks just like Clint Eastwood. They'll probably have to nix Odetta's anti-white expletives too because it won't fit with Idris Elba being black.

I can't comment much on A Wrinkle in Time because I never read it. But the production does seem agenda driven. And that can easily ruin everything else. I doubt it will do well. It's not a big enough fandom and probably won't be good enough on its own to be a surprise hit. If it fails, tumblr will blame white men and racism. And if it fails and it's terrible they'll still act like it's the greatest movie ever made. Just like with the Ghostbusters remake. Either way it's going to get gushed over by people who only care that it stars a black girl instead of caring about whether or not it was a good movie. Just like all of those terrible indie games that get praised solely because of how much diversity the devs managed to jam in, films can suffer from the same problem. In the midst of trying to cater to certain people the production team forgets to make something that's actually entertaining.
 
Dysnomia said:
Sure seems that way. Anyone who speaks negatively about it will be beat back down.



Well whatshername tried with The Hunger Games. Katniss was ambiguously olive right? But people were upset with the casting regardless even though olive skin casts a pretty wide net to begin with. Trying to make a character like that just causes everyone to argue even more over it. The race of characters has gotten stupidly important now to the effect that the debate can overshadow everything else about them.

If a character isn't explicitly described they could look like anyone.

I'm actually not very familiar with A Wrinkle in Time. I did read several of The Dark Tower books though. And I could have sworn someone points out that Roland looks just like Clint Eastwood. They'll probably have to nix Odetta's anti-white expletives too because it won't fit with Idris Elba being black.

I can't comment much on A Wrinkle in Time because I never read it. But the production does seem agenda driven. And that can easily ruin everything else. I doubt it will do well. It's not a big enough fandom and probably won't be good enough on its own to be a surprise hit. If it fails, tumblr will blame white men and racism. And if it fails and it's terrible they'll still act like it's the greatest movie ever made. Just like with the Ghostbusters remake. Either way it's going to get gushed over by people who only care that it stars a black girl instead of caring about whether or not it was a good movie. Just like all of those terrible indie games that get praised solely because of how much diversity the devs managed to jam in, films can suffer from the same problem. In the midst of trying to cater to certain people the production team forgets to make something that's actually entertaining.
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As someone who's read A Wrinkle in Time and is also a Transformers fan, I really, REALLY want this movie to have the father call his daughter by the nickname "Megatron" like he does in the book (even though the book predates The Transformers by a number of years lol). IDC who gets cast as whom. Just, movie, make that happen.
 
Remember when tumblr went obsessed for weeks over Lupita Nyongo?

And it happened that most tumblrinas didn't even watch her films, they just saw her on the red carpet and that was enough to get them gushing.

I'm guessing it' gonna happen the same here, most people won't watch the film but they'll go "omg little black girl yass"
 
Dysnomia said:
Sure seems that way. Anyone who speaks negatively about it will be beat back down.



Well whatshername tried with The Hunger Games. Katniss was ambiguously olive right? But people were upset with the casting regardless even though olive skin casts a pretty wide net to begin with. Trying to make a character like that just causes everyone to argue even more over it. The race of characters has gotten stupidly important now to the effect that the debate can overshadow everything else about them.

If a character isn't explicitly described they could look like anyone.

I'm actually not very familiar with A Wrinkle in Time. I did read several of The Dark Tower books though. And I could have sworn someone points out that Roland looks just like Clint Eastwood. They'll probably have to nix Odetta's anti-white expletives too because it won't fit with Idris Elba being black.
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Well, King himself was satisfied, so that's something. And considering how much of the series they're going to have to leave out, it probably won't be that big of a deal in the end. (Are they going to do the whole series? Or just this one movie? Because if they're doing all of them, it should be called "The Gunslinger") I'm pretty iffy on them doing one in the first place for that reason, because it will have to be so condensed. (I loved "The Dark Tower" series.)

As for AWIT, it's been so long since I read them, I can't remember jackshit about the books.


(If you really want to complain about Disney inaccuracies, consider how much they change their fairy tales. Those were originally some dark shit)
 
Mrs Paul said:
Well, King himself was satisfied, so that's something. And considering how much of the series they're going to have to leave out, it probably won't be that big of a deal in the end. (Are they going to do the whole series? Or just this one movie? Because if they're doing all of them, it should be called "The Gunslinger") I'm pretty iffy on them doing one in the first place for that reason, because it will have to be so condensed. (I loved "The Dark Tower" series.)

As for AWIT, it's been so long since I read them, I can't remember jackshit about the books.


(If you really want to complain about Disney inaccuracies, consider how much they change their fairy tales. Those were originally some dark shit)
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Readers' Digest version: The dad in the books learned how to basically teleport (it's called "Tessarect" in the book) to other worlds. Three strange old ladies appear to the daughter, Meg, and sons, and help them find and rescue him. They find him on a planet called Camazotz which is some Orwellian shithole with zombie-like mass conformity to the point that anything out of the pattern causes residents distress--a startled child (upon seeing the sudden appearance of newcomers--Meg and the others) whose ball is caused to fall out of the exact rhythm of the other childrens' bouncing balls causes the child's mother to panic, grab kid, and retreat into their house. It's controlled by a lawful-evil entity called "IT", which takes control of Charles Wallace (the youngest brother). They end up escaping Camazotz and defeating IT, and the father gets to come home.
 
L'Engle was a Episcopalian and believed in universal salvation, writing that "All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones."As a result of her promotion of Christian universalism, many Christian bookstores refused to carry her books, which were also frequently banned from Christian schools and libraries. At the same time, some of her most secular critics attacked her work for being too religious.
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Heh. Talk about 'damned if you do and damned if you don't'. I vaguely remember liking her books (it was a series), but finding the little brother insufferable.
 
BadaBadaBoom said:
*autistic screeching*
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Calm your tits

I think I'm the only person who's never read this book. I've never understood people who get really mad when white characters are turned black, but I've also never seen any good reason to co-opt existing characters and media and shoehorning minorities into roles when it would be far better to create new movies/books/whatevers with minority characters organically.

That said, Idris Alba is dope and the Dark Tower is dope. This? Meh.
 
MarineTrainedTard said:
Calm your tits

I think I'm the only person who's never read this book. I've never understood people who get really mad when white characters are turned black, but I've also never seen any good reason to co-opt existing characters and media and shoehorning minorities into roles when it would be far better to create new movies/books/whatevers with minority characters organically.

That said, Idris Alba is dope and the Dark Tower is dope. This? Meh.
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A Canadian company did an adaptation of the Gordon Korman "Bruno and Boots/MacDonald Hall" book "Go Jump In The Pool". Originally the character of Wilbur Hackenschleimer was clearly a tall, portly white kid of German, possibly Jewish, descent. They cast a black actor for the part in the TV movie, which I didn't really have a problem with, cuz the guy they cast was certainly big enough for the part, and his performance was acceptable; though the last name "Hackenschleimer" didn't seem to fit as a result.
 
MarineTrainedTard said:
Calm your tits

I think I'm the only person who's never read this book. I've never understood people who get really mad when white characters are turned black, but I've also never seen any good reason to co-opt existing characters and media and shoehorning minorities into roles when it would be far better to create new movies/books/whatevers with minority characters organically.
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Well, here's the thing. According to the most recent US census, blacks make up around 12% of the population.

12%.

If you watch TV or movies, it feels more like 75%. And let's not get started with how overrepresented LGBTQ is becoming all of a sudden in, well, just about everything.

All things in moderation. I don't mind seeing diveristy, but I don't need forced diversity. It's the schoolmarmish, brittle forced quality of this stuff that becomes annoying. So I'd say that while there is no need to sperg out about it, there is a point here that can be rationally made.

The funny thing is that the obsession with rigidly ticking off racial checklists in popular culture seems to come from uptight SJW whites more than actual POC.
 
^Honestly the tokenism stuff is even worse in Europe, because the POC population are nowhere near as large as the white, native population (at least compared to the USA), yet in every commercial and movie made in Europe nowadays we must show blacks, muslims, etc etc, otherwise they're RACIST.
 
Oil said:
Well, here's the thing. According to the most recent US census, blacks make up around 12% of the population.

12%.

If you watch TV or movies, it feels more like 75%. And let's not get started with how overrepresented LGBTQ is becoming all of a sudden in, well, just about everything.

All things in moderation. I don't mind seeing diveristy, but I don't need forced diversity. It's the schoolmarmish, brittle forced quality of this stuff that becomes annoying. So I'd say that while there is no need to sperg out about it, there is a point here that can be rationally made.

The funny thing is that the obsession with rigidly ticking off racial checklists in popular culture seems to come from uptight SJW whites more than actual POC.
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Perhaps, but I think the people flying into a frothing rage over it need to take their meds. Sure, it's definitely disproportionate, and there would be no harm in toning it down, but I don't think its occurrences are enough to get bent out of shape about it, unless it was something like a biopic about, say, Isaac Newton or an attempt at a historically accurate 17th century Tsarist Russia and they cast black people for lead characters.

There absolutely is a good discussion to be had about tokenism and forced diversity for the sake of diversity, for sure.
 
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