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[Ampersands]

Movies aren't like literature. Movies are much more passive, enjoy a greater deal of mainstream attention, and are almost exclusively made by more than one person. Diversity is not that big an issue in books because the reader is allowed to project their own visions of the characters they read. It's the opposite in movies.

In movies, the spectator must accept the creator's vision of the story. In filmmaking's relatively short history, that vision has predominately been white. This means that generations of landmark stories and films have been imbued with white culture and people where they didn't, on a storytelling basis, have to be. There are some movies that should be excluded from this scrutiny like Manchester By the Sea because they assert their value in storytelling the same as a film like Moonlight does. Good storytelling should never be compromised by diversity, but diversity shouldn't be an issue in the first place. Ideally, movies would be accurate to their era and provide an appropriate distribution of races so that diversity is nothing more than an afterthought. But the aforementioned history of Hollywood is such a heavy burden that any minority inclusion feels like a disproportionate evening of the odds (even it's still very much opposite). This is why I'd say the conversation/controversy surrounding Ghostbusters was more important than the quality of the film itself.

I agree that attention to diversity should never distract from attention to quality but the issue deserves attention, especially given the history and impact of film. Why not push the issue with mainstream movies whose storytelling is not refined enough to be compromised by diversity?

 

[Boney]

Identity politics have seen a dramatic rise in popularity thanks to social media, where social injustices can be more easily chastised and people can rally behind public opinion leaders. Identity politics is easily relatable and doesn't need constant academic intricacies to sustain itself in an argument.

The engagement with pop culture stems from the simple idea of the social construction of reality and the dialetic relationship it has with fiction. If fiction is both a representation of reality and it also manifests reality, then it's only natural to be critical of the elements surrounding the construction of said literary work. There's a lot of intricacies to race, gender and class representation and no one way of doing it right, it can even be a multicultural work without the direct insertion of "X" identity, but GAP like objectification of multiculturalism through culture colonialism is counter productive.

One cannot dissociate the work itself with it's manifest identity but I do agree there's a predominant focus on it because how pseudo intellectual it can be and easy it is to fill content with.

But the other fact of the matter is that more than ever, pop culture is so content free and vapid, that there's no where else to take the discussion to. Ghostbusters being the most controversial film of the year really speaks volumes of our times.

 

[Media]

To me, it comes down to this: artists are free to create whatever they want, but are not free from criticism concerning that art. They are then free to learn from the criticism or ignore it. Criticism is as universal as art. Don't become an artist if you can't handle it, because no matter what you do, it will happen.

 

[junpei]

There is a certain element to racism that has to do with default bias. People are so used to the idea that the protagonist is some white person that they can't even imagine them being otherwise(see pics). More often than not the whole "artistic integrity" has more to do with preserving the status quo then actual artistic Merit. The current system heavily favors having a white protagonist and if there is a minority protagonist them being minority needs to be "justified". Because we're so accustomed to this default white protagonist when we create things we often create around the idea of a white protagonist. It's not wrong for forces other than the Creator (publishers, editors,etc) to paint a more accurate picture of Humanity. Besides I feel that it is very rare that any piece of work get to the consumers hands without there being someone other than the author to approve it. If artistic freedom is so important to the Creator they have the option to self-publish.