My resolve is weakening

[etherial]

So far, Doctor Strange has been getting rave reviews. It's been on my nix list due to the blatant racism in the casting decisions and I'm looking for ideas for penance to pay in lieu of a boycott. That way, I can make a clear decision in advance whether I think it's worth the blood price.

What do you recommend I donate and to whom to make up for any contributions I might make to Hollywood's Whitewashing?

Comments

[stillking.livejournal.com]

If this is, earnestly, a deeply-held belief of yours, as opposed to some reactionary Huffington-Post thing, then you could, perhaps, extend your scrutiny to the composition of the supporting staff, cosmetics/hairstyle/wardrobe assistants, and post-production teams (incl. digital effects), ensuring that their representations conform to the "ideal" mix of races, colors, and creeds.

At best, 100M ticket-holders out of the 7B inhabiting this planet will see the film -- that's something like 1.4% of the entire population, the overwhelming majority of even that 1.4% never even bothering to devote a spare thought to whether Character X was (in)correctly assigned Color/Creed/Gender/Race Y. Whereas the corollary argument that "Z-colored/gendered individuals need to see others of their kind on-screen" is valid, I humbly submit that such needs are being met elsewhere (BET, Nick Junior, PBS Kids, new Netflix franchises), and that this occupies a negligible fraction of social consciousness compared to such yawning chasms as, say, wage-inequality or political representation.

Alternately, on the off chance that this is a comic purist "Character A must be Genotype B" deal -- it's all fiction. Hermione Granger can be Afro-British in one adaptation, and chalky-White in the next, and a blue-skinned Martian in the one after that. Not a big deal. Go see the film, and generate a conscientious "carbon credit" via donating $TICKET_PRICE_OR_GREATER to APIA Vote, OCA, AALDEF, SAALT, or similar.

[siderea]

etherial, is this a friend of yours?

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I don't have the time to deal with everything that's wrong with this comment, so I'll just drop this link that explains why taking characters of color out of Western media is cruel to children in a different but important way than institutionalized racist hiring practices, which are also a problem.

http://www.hitfix.com/harpy/casting-minorities-as-white-characters-is-not-a-double-standard-heres-why

[jducoeur]

It's worth reading some of the interviews with the director, who is apparently mortified by the whole thing. (Eg, this one.) He had switched the casting of The Ancient One because the actual character from the comics was such an out-of-date stereotype (the same way he updated Wong) that he felt he needed to make some changes, and miscalculated. Having been, let's say, educated by the controversy, he's been refreshingly free with the mea culpa's.

So personally, I'm inclined to forgive him -- it's a nice change to get an honest embarrassed apology instead of the typical stonewalling. An educable moment for Hollywood...