I’m sorry, but these protests are going to far! That was a perfectly fine soup!

Yeah, I can see our difference in how we defined what’s shoe-horned in. And I get that you’re not saying diversity in media is bad. However, respectfully, I don’t think your definition of shoe-horned makes a lot of sense if you think it through. Is the music shoe-horned in, because it’s not critical to the plot? You said yourself that adding information that isn’t critical to the plot is necessary or the movie will be bland. If it’s necessary to the movie, wouldn’t you agree that it is critical? It may not be for the plot, but it is for the movie. Movies aren’t just plot. A lot of great movies (Nomadland, Patterson, Dazed and Confused, Coffee and Cigarettes, The Straight Story, …) don’t have a lot of plot or tell a great story. Instead they focus on the characters and the mood.

I think your example with the “blond, blue eyed, straight white men” betrays your perspective. This isn’t describing the default human being. Most people on earth aren’t like that. But it is the de facto default in western media. Why is it that? Because for a long time it was white men who made the decisions. Now that it has become a norm, everything that deviates needs a justification. And that’s kinda fucked up, isn’t it?

So, I think the question isn’t, why don’t “normal” character traits get the same hate as “alternate” traits? The question is, who defines what is normal?

That’s kind of a weird argument. I always took “shoe-horned” to imply that it is pressed into something by force where it doesn’t quite fit. So, in my mind just because something is intentional doesn’t mean it is shoe-horned.

Creative works always come from the authors lived experiences. The reason why we often find representation of minorities missing in media, is because these minorities don’t get to work on them. If there would be more diverse teams working on something we would naturally see more of their diverse experiences represented.

However, for this to be the case a lot would have to change in our society. It is way easier to just keep things more or less as they were and let people without minority experiences write and add minority characters. These, in turn, feel off, feel shoe-horned in, because they aren’t based off of lived experiences. They are just there to check a box.

Conversely, the reason why it feels like we used to have better (though less) diverse representations in media is because these actually came from people who had these experiences.

I don’t think that’s how it goes, either. I mean sure, for Pride Month all the corpos glam on to it to market their stuff “to the gays” and there is the odd product line designed for them as well. But I’m pretty sure nobody is adding gay characters to video games, shows or movies, because the market research shows that it’s popular now. It’s still quite the opposite.

Companies would still rather have nothing that could be seen as “controversial” in their products, with the odd exception that wants to be controversial. Games, shows, movies are made by creative people and among them are and have always been queer people. They have always been pushing for representation. Over time this pushing of the envelop as well as social movements lead from characters that can be read as queer (mostly villains, though), to clearly queer coded (still mostly villains) to finally openly queer characters (only villains and side characters). Only in the last decade it has become acceptable to have openly queer main characters in media. Not because marketing pushed for it, or because it’s trendy, but because queer people exist and they also work in media and they write their experiences and it has now become socially acceptable enough for them to get a little representation in mainstream media as well.

In my opinion the reason why “queer” seems “trendy” and everything seems “woke” and “political” is because we are still so used to the conservative, status quo, straight white guy/girl media that anything outside of that sticks out like a sore thumb. And, as they say, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

He does, too

Mir geht es genauso. Ich krieg mittlerweile kleine Panik-Attacken beim Lemmy und Mastodon scrollen und werde da dieses Wochenende zumindest mal eine Pause einlegen. Die Zeitungen, Talk- und Newssendungen ertrage ich schon eine Weile nicht mehr.

Ich habe das Gefühl wir werden von Karrieregeilheit und Angst regiert. Aber was wir brauchen ist Ehrlichkeit und Menschlichkeit.

Auf der einen Seite kann ich einfach nicht mehr, auf der anderen hab ich das Gefühl, dass ich auch nicht nichts machen kann. Darum schreibe ich an einem Brief den ich diversen Politikern dann handgeschrieben zukommen lassen möchte. Das scheint mir der effektivste Weg da noch irgendwen zu erreichen.

Klar, ich erwarte jetzt nicht, dass die schmilzt sobald man heißes Wasser reinfüllt. Aber nachdem immer wieder Studien rauskommen, dass sich aus verschiedenen Plastiksorten dann doch Stoffe über Zeit rauslösen, wenn sie warm werden, hab ich da einfach kein Vertrauen mehr, auch wenn es angeblich sicher sein soll. Aber das darf gern jeder für sich entscheiden.

Bei der stört mich, dass alles aus Plastik ist und ich da heißes Wasser reingießen soll.

Not sure if it’s underrated, but Sunshine (2007) is really great!

Das gleiche könnte man in Sachsen auch über Die Linke sagen. Aber ob das geschickter ist eine 5% Partei mehr drin zu haben statt einen großen Gegenpol mit der CDU zu haben, weiß ich nicht.

Dem kann ich nur zustimmen. Wobei sie Situation für geflüchtete Menschen noch wesentlich schlechter ist, als den meisten Menschen bewusst. Selbst wenn sie deutsch sprechen, sind Termine bei Behörden oder Ärzten kaum ohne Übersetzer machbar. Aber von denen gibt es viel zu wenige und die bereits überarbeiteten Menschen, die ihnen dann gegenüber sitzen, haben weder die Geduld noch das Verständnis, um ihnen angemessen zu helfen. Das Leben in Deutschland ohne ausgezeichnete Deutschkenntnisse und Verständnis für unsere Bürokratie ist verwirrend und frustrierend selbst wenn man sich Mühe gibt. Und dazu kommen dann noch direkte und indirekte Anfeindungen, weil man sie falsche Hautfarbe hat.

Das Problem, dass wir mit der Aufnahme von Migranten haben, ist dass unser öffentliche Institutionen sowieso schon unterbelegt und überarbeitet sind. Das zu verbessern würde uns allen zugute kommen!

Wir müssen endlich aufhören Migration und Flüchtlinge als Probleme zu behandeln! Das sind Chancen! Das sind helfende Hände, die da kommen. Das sind Menschen, die nichts anderes wollen als sich hier ein gutes Leben zu erarbeiten. Was für eine Bereicherung sie sein könnten, auch kulturell! Aber statt sie wirklich willkommen zu heißen, werden sie wie Probleme behandelt. Wen kann es wundern, wenn sich von diesen Menschen einer beschließt Probleme zu machen? Mich wundert, dass es nicht mehr sind.

…because they know how to swear in Russian?

Wer ist das und was ist der Kontext?

I think there is enough precedence to come to the belief that remakes are bad in and of itself. Big movie companies do like to put their money in already established or at least known franchises or names. This leads to them forcing a movie they think should make money rather than letting the creatives follow their passion, which may or may not lead to better movies. And then there is also the typical knee-jerk online reaction in play here. People like to be dismissive and jaded about things. I think it’s partly because we have a lot of reasons to be jaded, but it’s also because it’s easy and it makes you feel smarter. I believe in most cases people aren’t actually informed enough to form a real opinion, they just like to shit on things online to make themselves feel better.

In my late teens and early twenties I had a phase where I basically disliked every new movie. I thought old movies where perfect and new movies where all just cash grabs with the exception of indie movies. After a bit of growing and working in a creative industry myself, I now know that this is bullshit. There are lots of reasons why movies turn out bad, but in most cases the people working on them are trying their best and genuinely want to make something great. With that in mind I’ve become much more open and appreciative. It’s so easy to shit on things online. It is very, very hard to make a movie, even a bad one.

Sure, sometimes the movie turns out bad and yes the chances of a reboot, remake, sequel or prequel to be bad is higher. But it might also turn out to be a great movie in it’s own right! To be honest lots of old movies did not age well and could use a remake. If you don’t like it, the original movie is still there for you to watch instead.

I doubt enough people realized this for this effect. I’m not a huge Star Wars fan myself and this went completely over my head. I don’t doubt that dedicated Star Wars fans picked up on it immediately, but most probably only heard of it from these. I see that a lot online. People decide to hate a piece of media even before it airs and then collect reasons for it after the fact.

But that’s just my guess, anyway. I haven’t watched The Acolyte farther than episode 4 or 5, but not because of anything specific. Just didn’t grab me to keep watching. I thought I’ll come back to it eventually, but now that I know it’s canceled I probably won’t.

I’m all for suing, but this is the worst kind of video. Vertical, with minimal information and no sources. There is no reason this should be a video 👎

“Wie der Schmäh mit Überraschungen rennt”???

We got similar stats here in Germany.

Not surprising to be honest, but considering how much fear mongering the right does about antifa and climate “terrorists” a good reality check.

Don’t get the down votes. That was a fun video 🤷

Data hoarding