HensKenKline
kiwifarms.net
I wanna just give a slightly different angle to arguing about whether representation even makes sense. For the sake of this argument, let's say representation is a good thing, just to simplify.
Art is a personal expression. Now, I know, a large game or film producing corporation might not leave a lot of room for true creativity, but fundamentally, creativity or some form of self-expression is still at the core of it, no matter how muddled.
Now, is it cool for people to see themselves in a movie? Sure. But, I'm going to argue in the same way I'd argue for capitalism over communism: Freedom. Would it be nice if everyone was wealthy and never had to work? Sure. But to achieve this (or even attempt to), you would have to commit evil. You have to enslave people to work for the system so that it can "provide" for everyone. You have to take away people's right to freely exchange their own time for a reward they consider adequate. Taxation is an example of that. Now, I'm not gonna argue for anarchy, more for a minimalist state, libertarian style, but that's beside the point.
Taxation can be justified perhaps with some things in life being a bare necessity. For example a military and police is important, to be safe from foreign armies invading, and to fight crime. So one can argue that any taxation necessary to ensure this, whilst inherently not very ethical in that it's theft, can be justified, since individual freedom is meaningless if your country can just get overrun, eradicated and all freedoms removed, or if you can get mugged on the street and killed with no consequence.
I think with representation in art, it's a similar story in one way, but not in another.
It's similar in that freedom of expression is extremely important. Nobody should command you how to express yourself (unless you are literally attacking someone with a knife or something). If you want to draw a painting, nobody should have the right to dictate what you should draw. It would be spiritual rape in my opinion. If I was a painter, I'd rather not draw anything than to be forced to draw something that isn't truly what I wanted to draw. Unless it was my job which I willingly accepted ofc, then i'd do so reluctantly.
This witch hunt for diversity is exactly this. It's saying "you better draw the painting the way we want you to draw it, or else".
Let's say there's a white filmmaker who doesn't know much or care much about black people, and doesn't have any black friends or anything either. He wants to make a movie about some of his life experiences, whatever those may be. Or maybe he has some other ideas. Because his life doesn't really have a lot of context of black people in it (or maybe just because he doesnt really care about black people), he doesn't include any black people in the movie. All he's trying to do is express his own vision, his own ideas.
And then somebody comes along and says "no. you arent allowed to express your ideas this way. include black people". But those black people weren't part of his vision to begin with. He didn't have a vision with black people and then exclude them because he is a racist. He just doesn't give a shit, he's just trying to tell a story that relates to him personally. And now we have people saying that's not okay, and calling him god knows what for it.
If films were some kind of government-funded thing created for and by the public, then I suppose I could kind of get why it should have representation in it, because everybody has to pay taxes and should be treated equally and get the same amount of reward. Of course those movies would be design-by-committee garbage and would suck ass, but anyway.
My point is, I think creative expression is a very intimate and personal thing and nobody has the right to interfere with it. Representation is not a bare necessity, so there can be no justification for enforcing it and breaching this personal freedom. I would even go as far as to defend SJWs if they want to express themselves through SJW garbo games, they should be allowed to do so without anyone threatening them.
Just because a movie doesn't have blacks or women in it doesn't make it oppressive. It's just an expression of whoever was making the movie and was maybe never meant to appeal to everyone. If black people or women want to be represented, they can either wait for a white man to do it for them or do it themselves, nobody is stopping them. And many do, and that's fine.
But why would anyone think the he's entitled to be included in someone else's creative expression? It's mind boggling.
Now, you can turn this around and say "well that's pretty hypocritical, because you yourself complain about not being represented in a good way as a white man". True, to a degree its hypocritical, but I think it's not a perfect comparison because today's shitty representation of white men in movies (always dumb, weak, submissive, ignorant, evil, you name it) is not an honest expression of the people producing the movie in my opinion. It is an act of yielding, fear of retaliation and real physical threat (being attacked in the streets by antifa etc). That's still being almost optimistic in terms of motive of course. At least fear comes from an authentic place. If we look at the reality of the market right now, representation seems to be used for pandering - for one (but mostly to white liberal teenagers who want to assuage their white guilt) - but more deviously, as a safeguard against criticism, which might be giving them a financial edge.
For instance, put some representation into a movie (no matter how awkwardly) and any criticism of it can be deflected as "Nazi trolls". So if your movie gets shitty reviews because it's shit, you can just pretend that it's all Nazis and who knows, maybe through Placebo or whatever, people will even support the movie more and even convince themselves that it's not quite so bad. And your publicly traded corporation doesn't take a hit as it would if the movie had no defense against criticism.
In any case, back to the point, I would even defend SJWs when they do a crazy stupid SJW game, not from criticism but from any harm/real threat. I know I'm not entitled to tell them what to do with the position they have earned (if they earned it anyway). But whenever someone creates a movie or game that doesn't have representation, you immediately hear people screech about it and call people words that could get them actually hurt, lose them their job or whatever. And that's just insane to me. Why do these people think they are entitled to be included in someone's artistic expression? Representation is nice, but to think that you have the right to be represented by every single creative in the whole world, and be in the headspace and consciousness of everyone all the time and dominate their thoughts and fantasies to the degree where you are part of every single one of them ... it's mind-boggling how tyrannical this is.
And this is also why I think it's fair to call out (not physically threaten ofc) phony (99%) representation in today's media. Because there's a very good chance that the only reason this "representation" exists is because people are scared out of their minds to NOT include blacks/women/gays whatever. And this just ends up being janky insincere annoying propaganda. If there's a truly great story stemming from a real (divine?) inspiration that includes blacks and women, then it'd be great if it had the chance to be expressed, as it would truly contribute something real and authentic. For all I care, the movie about 50 cent has more soul and authenticity than any of the Disney pandering garbage, and I say that as someone who fucking hates rap. At least it's a real story that meant something to someone who actually is black. It's not just "look, we made a story about white people, but we cast a few black actors, come watch it, we're so virtuous!"
And it's especially obvious when they take characters who were never black to begin with and make them black. What the fuck is wrong with these people? I mean, I would understand it if a Nigerian prince casts Cinderella with local black actors, but we're not in Nigeria ffs, there's surely more than enough talented white actors available, and making Spiderman black is also hardly some kind of authentic artistic expression that even means anything. It's literally just "look, you can be spiderman if youre black too".
And ironically, when you take a character who is not white in the original and you cast it with a white person, they absolutely lose their shit. In particular, they got a school play cancelled because some character (who was hispanic? Esmeralda or sth?) was played by a white girl. It's a fucking school, how many talented actor kids do you think that school has? They can't cast from the entire world. If they could, I agree it would be better to have a Hispanic actress, but holy shit. They did have a hispanic actor girl apparently but maybe she fucking sucked at acting and thus didnt get the role. So anyway, imagine being the father of that white girl who got the role and explaining to her why the entire school play got cancelled because she is white. It's so fucking evil, holy shit.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts I had. I think it is spiritually corrupt to force any form of artistic expression or forbid any form of artistic expression.
Art is a personal expression. Now, I know, a large game or film producing corporation might not leave a lot of room for true creativity, but fundamentally, creativity or some form of self-expression is still at the core of it, no matter how muddled.
Now, is it cool for people to see themselves in a movie? Sure. But, I'm going to argue in the same way I'd argue for capitalism over communism: Freedom. Would it be nice if everyone was wealthy and never had to work? Sure. But to achieve this (or even attempt to), you would have to commit evil. You have to enslave people to work for the system so that it can "provide" for everyone. You have to take away people's right to freely exchange their own time for a reward they consider adequate. Taxation is an example of that. Now, I'm not gonna argue for anarchy, more for a minimalist state, libertarian style, but that's beside the point.
Taxation can be justified perhaps with some things in life being a bare necessity. For example a military and police is important, to be safe from foreign armies invading, and to fight crime. So one can argue that any taxation necessary to ensure this, whilst inherently not very ethical in that it's theft, can be justified, since individual freedom is meaningless if your country can just get overrun, eradicated and all freedoms removed, or if you can get mugged on the street and killed with no consequence.
I think with representation in art, it's a similar story in one way, but not in another.
It's similar in that freedom of expression is extremely important. Nobody should command you how to express yourself (unless you are literally attacking someone with a knife or something). If you want to draw a painting, nobody should have the right to dictate what you should draw. It would be spiritual rape in my opinion. If I was a painter, I'd rather not draw anything than to be forced to draw something that isn't truly what I wanted to draw. Unless it was my job which I willingly accepted ofc, then i'd do so reluctantly.
This witch hunt for diversity is exactly this. It's saying "you better draw the painting the way we want you to draw it, or else".
Let's say there's a white filmmaker who doesn't know much or care much about black people, and doesn't have any black friends or anything either. He wants to make a movie about some of his life experiences, whatever those may be. Or maybe he has some other ideas. Because his life doesn't really have a lot of context of black people in it (or maybe just because he doesnt really care about black people), he doesn't include any black people in the movie. All he's trying to do is express his own vision, his own ideas.
And then somebody comes along and says "no. you arent allowed to express your ideas this way. include black people". But those black people weren't part of his vision to begin with. He didn't have a vision with black people and then exclude them because he is a racist. He just doesn't give a shit, he's just trying to tell a story that relates to him personally. And now we have people saying that's not okay, and calling him god knows what for it.
If films were some kind of government-funded thing created for and by the public, then I suppose I could kind of get why it should have representation in it, because everybody has to pay taxes and should be treated equally and get the same amount of reward. Of course those movies would be design-by-committee garbage and would suck ass, but anyway.
My point is, I think creative expression is a very intimate and personal thing and nobody has the right to interfere with it. Representation is not a bare necessity, so there can be no justification for enforcing it and breaching this personal freedom. I would even go as far as to defend SJWs if they want to express themselves through SJW garbo games, they should be allowed to do so without anyone threatening them.
Just because a movie doesn't have blacks or women in it doesn't make it oppressive. It's just an expression of whoever was making the movie and was maybe never meant to appeal to everyone. If black people or women want to be represented, they can either wait for a white man to do it for them or do it themselves, nobody is stopping them. And many do, and that's fine.
But why would anyone think the he's entitled to be included in someone else's creative expression? It's mind boggling.
Now, you can turn this around and say "well that's pretty hypocritical, because you yourself complain about not being represented in a good way as a white man". True, to a degree its hypocritical, but I think it's not a perfect comparison because today's shitty representation of white men in movies (always dumb, weak, submissive, ignorant, evil, you name it) is not an honest expression of the people producing the movie in my opinion. It is an act of yielding, fear of retaliation and real physical threat (being attacked in the streets by antifa etc). That's still being almost optimistic in terms of motive of course. At least fear comes from an authentic place. If we look at the reality of the market right now, representation seems to be used for pandering - for one (but mostly to white liberal teenagers who want to assuage their white guilt) - but more deviously, as a safeguard against criticism, which might be giving them a financial edge.
For instance, put some representation into a movie (no matter how awkwardly) and any criticism of it can be deflected as "Nazi trolls". So if your movie gets shitty reviews because it's shit, you can just pretend that it's all Nazis and who knows, maybe through Placebo or whatever, people will even support the movie more and even convince themselves that it's not quite so bad. And your publicly traded corporation doesn't take a hit as it would if the movie had no defense against criticism.
In any case, back to the point, I would even defend SJWs when they do a crazy stupid SJW game, not from criticism but from any harm/real threat. I know I'm not entitled to tell them what to do with the position they have earned (if they earned it anyway). But whenever someone creates a movie or game that doesn't have representation, you immediately hear people screech about it and call people words that could get them actually hurt, lose them their job or whatever. And that's just insane to me. Why do these people think they are entitled to be included in someone's artistic expression? Representation is nice, but to think that you have the right to be represented by every single creative in the whole world, and be in the headspace and consciousness of everyone all the time and dominate their thoughts and fantasies to the degree where you are part of every single one of them ... it's mind-boggling how tyrannical this is.
And this is also why I think it's fair to call out (not physically threaten ofc) phony (99%) representation in today's media. Because there's a very good chance that the only reason this "representation" exists is because people are scared out of their minds to NOT include blacks/women/gays whatever. And this just ends up being janky insincere annoying propaganda. If there's a truly great story stemming from a real (divine?) inspiration that includes blacks and women, then it'd be great if it had the chance to be expressed, as it would truly contribute something real and authentic. For all I care, the movie about 50 cent has more soul and authenticity than any of the Disney pandering garbage, and I say that as someone who fucking hates rap. At least it's a real story that meant something to someone who actually is black. It's not just "look, we made a story about white people, but we cast a few black actors, come watch it, we're so virtuous!"
And it's especially obvious when they take characters who were never black to begin with and make them black. What the fuck is wrong with these people? I mean, I would understand it if a Nigerian prince casts Cinderella with local black actors, but we're not in Nigeria ffs, there's surely more than enough talented white actors available, and making Spiderman black is also hardly some kind of authentic artistic expression that even means anything. It's literally just "look, you can be spiderman if youre black too".
And ironically, when you take a character who is not white in the original and you cast it with a white person, they absolutely lose their shit. In particular, they got a school play cancelled because some character (who was hispanic? Esmeralda or sth?) was played by a white girl. It's a fucking school, how many talented actor kids do you think that school has? They can't cast from the entire world. If they could, I agree it would be better to have a Hispanic actress, but holy shit. They did have a hispanic actor girl apparently but maybe she fucking sucked at acting and thus didnt get the role. So anyway, imagine being the father of that white girl who got the role and explaining to her why the entire school play got cancelled because she is white. It's so fucking evil, holy shit.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts I had. I think it is spiritually corrupt to force any form of artistic expression or forbid any form of artistic expression.
