[ SECRET POST #4655 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4655 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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08. [SPOILERS for Chicago Med]

[Conner/Ava]







Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #666.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. https://i.imgur.com/KddXrKG.png

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. I'm just getting into Instinct and it's refreshing to see a show where "I have a different job" is a bigger deal than "we're gay."

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed!

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like slapped on diversity either. It bugs me.

[(Anonymous)]

What do you have in mind as examples of slapped on diversity crap?

[(Anonymous)]

Not the person you replied to, but I cannot stand token characters being presented as diversity because look! We added a (insert marginalized group here) character! We're woke, right? You'll give us money for our bare minimum efforts right?

[(Anonymous)]

DA I don't like these types of characters either. Sometimes their only function seems to be to remind all the other characters that racism and sexism still exist and we don't get to learn anything about them beyond that because they're just there to better the main characters. They're not characters in their own right, but plot devices.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that companies using diversity for woke PR points is incredibly annoying and exasperating.

I'm not sure what we mean by "tokenism" here bc that's an incredibly broad term, and IDK how much that lines up with complaining about gender and race swapped reboots, because I'm really not sure if making the lead character of your movie or TV show a woman or POC is what we would actually call "tokenism"

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP, but the first example that comes to my mind is Veronica Lodge from Riverdale. I guess after they cast a Latina actress for Veronica they decided to make the character Latina, too. That's not a terrible idea! But they didn't do any of the work of rewriting the character and her backstory. Like, both of her parents are Latinx too, but their names are Hiram and Hermione? And for added grittiness Hiram is a mobster instead of just some rich dude, but clearly not connected to Latino organized crime. He's in (what's obviously based on) the Italian mafia. So you have a Latino man, whose name is Hiram Lodge, and he's a godfather? If they really wanted to they could have justified those elements, or (even better) they could have tried harder to write authentically Latinx characters, but instead they just sprinkle in a little high school Spanish in the dialogue and call it a day.

[(Anonymous)]

There are a lot of reboots in Hollywood today, and that's frustrating on its own terms. But I think there's two trends here that you're confusing - there's lots of remakes (bad) and there's more diverse characters (good). I don't see how making a reboot diverse makes it worse or less annoying, and I don't see how reboots being diverse makes it harder for good, new, diverse stories and good, new, diverse characters to exist. It's not like the demand for diversity is forcing Hollywood to remake things.

And I also don't understand what makes it "slapped on diversity crap". There's lots of different ways to represent diversity and lots of different ways to be diverse, to be a person of color or a minority. Not every kind of representation has to line up with what you want it to be.

I just don't get where this aggravation against certain kinds of diversity comes from. I guess most of it is that people don't like some movies, and that's fine, you don't have to like everything, but just say you don't like it, don't turn it into this whole screed where the movies you don't like are Doing Diversity Wrong.

[tabaqui]

Think of the one-minute scene were a person in Steve's 'therapy' group in Endgame talks about a past SO and how they just went on a date and it was with a guy. And Steve is all 'so glad you're getting out there'.

The directors acted like they'd had STEVE come out as gay and weren't they just awesome and omg, look, first canon gay character in a Superhero movie!!!!11!!!!

That is 'slapped on diversity crap' at it's finest.

[(Anonymous)]

Look, I agree that the way that the directors and studio PR machines talk about that stuff is dumb as hell. But I don't think the scenes themselves are even that bad, and I have no idea what harm it's doing, let alone how it's preventing the creation of other diverse media.

[tabaqui]

The 'harm' is that that nothing scene can be used to check off the 'diversity square: LGBTQ character!', and then they go on with every major and minor and side character being cis and generally male and 99 times out of 100 white. It gives them 'cred' without actually doing a fucking thing.

And it keeps actual LGBTQ or people of color characters from being the main or even 'side' characters, because hey! we checked that box! We're done!

[osidiano]

Best example of slapped on diversity from Marvel remains Spider-Man: Homecoming, IMO. "Look at how diverse we are! A fat nerdy Asian sidekick who is good with computers and bad with girls, and a spunky woke black girl who in no way affects the plot!!!!1"

Having a minority character who is literally just the regular ol' stereotype isn't progressive. It's just as lazy as casting a white guy. :\

[tabaqui]

Meh, yes. Gee, never saw *that* coming!

[(Anonymous)]

Look, I can't speak for everyone, but for me when people do stuff like this, it feels like they don't actually care.

Like for instance: Marvel Comics with black girl Iron Man and woman Thor. I don't want to read comics about them. I want to read comics about Storm and Rogue. In fact, the reason I got into Marvel when I was a kid was because they had all these amazing multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-species characters. Sure, they were mostly supporting characters and white guys were leading the packs, but there was something for everyone. Everyone had unique super powers and it felt like everyone belonged in that universe. There was a place for everyone in that universe, no matter how much of a "freak" they were.

So when people start clamoring that they want more diversity in their media, Marvel hears their cries. They sure do. Instead of bringing their awesome supporting minority characters to the front, or hell, even taking the time to make new minority characters with unique powers, what does Marvel do? They just genderflip and racebend a few of their white guys. Because they care very deeply about representation and all that. Yep, they sure do. They're woke. Oh yeah, woke af.

I can't stand this shit. It's lazy and it's insulting.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep. It's like they just want to feel good about their faux progressiveness without really doing much so they take well loved roles and just half-heartedly shoehorn ~diverse~ characters into those roles instead of taking a gamble and actually making an effort by creating new diverse characters that can stand their own.
And then, when they have alienated both the established fans (by warping well loved superheroes into something else) and people wanting representation (because they can't be bothered to actually make new interesting characters and just treat minorities as lacking understudies for the "proper" versions of heroes) alike, they can just retire the failed attempt at making an established hero ~diverse~ and go back to the status quo by saying "see, we tried, diversity just doesn't sell".

[(Anonymous)]

The writing on that show is bad overall though.

[(Anonymous)]

Couldn't agree more. I'm so sick and tired of this race- and gender-swap bullshit and how people act like it's a great thing because... it's tokenism. It's literally just tokenism with a different coat of paint. It's paying lip service to diversity without putting in the effort to write REAL diversity.

It takes zero effort or thought to take an existing character from an existing story and just make them black with no consideration as to how that might affect the character. It takes a lot of thought and effort to write a new story with a black character and portray the experience of being non-white in a realistic and nuanced way. Race swaps are lazy mode diversity and generally an attempt by creators to look woke.

[(Anonymous)]

How on earth is it tokenism when you're making the lead character or characters minorities or women? It's tokenism if you have a single character who doesn't get any lines, sure. But you're telling me that, like, the all-female Ghostbuster is tokenism? What?

It takes zero effort or thought to take an existing character from an existing story and just make them black with no consideration as to how that might affect the character. It takes a lot of thought and effort to write a new story with a black character and portray the experience of being non-white in a realistic and nuanced way. Race swaps are lazy mode diversity and generally an attempt by creators to look woke.

I worry that this comes dangerously close to insisting that there's one true way of being black or being a woman and that lead characters in race- and gender-swapped projects aren't living up to it. I feel like you need to do a lot of work in terms of articulating specifically what kind of nuance is a necessary component of being black in a realistic way before you can insist that characters are bad because they don't fulfill some narrow conception you have in your head of what the black experience should be.

[(Anonymous)]

you sound really, really white right now

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I agree. It makes me feel like my intelligence is being insulted.

[(Anonymous)]

Same, especially when there's been so much great stuff with actual diversity lately. Brooklyn 99 is a perfect example, and heck, to pull from another secret in this batch, The Walking Dead is another.

[(Anonymous)]

/shrugs

i'd be good with both honestly, more original works that are diverse and inclusive and reboots changed up in that way too. don't see why it has to be an either/or situation.

and in all honesty, so long as a swapped-reboot concept doesn't do something horrifically offensive with the swapped cast/roles i can roll with a semi-lazy woke-grab reboot.