I don't appreciate the offhand remark that "Rian" is somehow a "gay" spelling of "Ryan." The guy got his name from his parents, I imagine; he didn't name himself. More to the point: how the fuck is that spelling gay? Stay on topic, Kinel.
Thursday, July 17, 2025
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So you do have a 'woke' bone in your body!
ReplyDeleteIf affirming that the "Rian" spelling isn't gay makes me woke (and why would that even matter? Kinel seems to think "gay" is still an insult, which is what I was really responding to), well, bring on the body paint, the piercings, the hair dye, and the mascara! I only hope that, wherever the "woke" resides in my body, it's not in the "bone."
DeleteMore seriously: I'm probably to the left of many American righties on questions of homosexuality, maybe partly because I have a gay brother whose wedding he'd asked me to officiate in 2015 (I wrote about that years ago). I was happy and proud to do so. I don't see gayness as a moral issue; to me, it's a simple matter of preference, like whether you want onions on your pizza. I'm pretty libertarian about things like sexual orientation: you don't bother me, and I won't bother you. Just don't force me to believe or practice whatever you believe or practice. I'll stay in my lane; you stay in yours.
But a bit like comedian Dave Chappelle, I draw the line at certain "trans" issues. Even there, I couldn't give a shit how a trans person chooses to live life—just don't call me a bigot if I say that I don't want to date trans women, and don't call me Hitler for thinking that trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports. That's a question I've gone over repeatedly on this blog, so I won't restate my thoughts here. But if someone wants to be out-there, flamboyantly gay or whatever, God bless 'em. Just don't expect me to join their Pride Parade float. (These are also insights I've expressed many times on this blog, so none of this is a surprise.)
I was just pulling your leg. However, it strikes me that a lot of what people complain about being 'woke' is just respecting other people's lifestyle choices. Even recasting certain characters as ethnic minorities doesn't bother me that much. If you're going to omit scenes that don't 'stand the test of time', then surely there's no harm in updating the cast to be more reflective of the demographics of modern day society. Frasier added some minorities to its new series and you'd assume that if they rebooted Friends, they wouldn't pick six white actors (although having said that, my friend group in Korea, once you strip out the Koreans, is overwhelmingly white).
DeleteTalking of Korea, watch almost any Korean drama and, unless they're filming a scene in Itaewon etc., all the background extras are Korean, but I bet you can't remember the last time you actually went out and about in Korea and didn't see a single foreigner. There are more than 2 million of us, and I kind of wish Korean dramas were more representative.
On the other issues, I'm with you. Leave them be to live their lives. But I would support some level of coverage of such issues in schools so that people who may be feeling confused can get relevant information. I'm not particularly convinced that schools are actively trying to push people down certain irreversible tracks, and clearly if that were the case, it would be horribly wrong.
Race-swapping (or sex-swapping) established characters that are part of a "canon"—just for the sake of "representation"—can be nettlesome, as can forcing inappropriate races into settings where they don't belong (black Vikings or LOTR characters despite LOTR's being based on northern European folklore; another example is casting someone of sub-Saharan African heritage for a Netflix movie about Nefertiti).
DeleteBut it's a case-by-case thing; there are times when I've been bothered by it, and other times when I haven't. In Villeneuve's "Dune, Part 1," for example, Dr. Kynes was made into a black woman, and I didn't mind. It made sense since the character of Chani—Kynes's daughter—was played by Zendaya, who is mixed-race. The swap also didn't affect the story significantly; it helped that the lady playing Kynes was a very good actress, and besides, I'm not sure how much Frank Herbert had described Kynes in his novel (definitely a man, but of what race? he was welcome among the Fremen, so he could've been of dusky complexion); I think there was some creative wiggle-room. I also like the persistent rumor about Idris Elba being a future James Bond. I think that would be awesome, and I love Idris (ever see the video of him on "Hot Ones," trying to down super-spicy chicken wings while being interviewed?). But when Peter Jackson stuffed Laketown full of "ethnically diverse" people in his "Hobbit" trilogy, I wasn't happy. In his LOTR trilogy, the cities and towns were ethnically un-diverse, as was appropriate for the story. Context matters.
As for representation in general: you may be aware of the running joke that, for satisfactory representation on American TV these days, at least half the cast must be black, Latino, Asian, and sex-orientationally diverse—this despite the fact that only 12-14% of the US population is black, 6-10% Hispanic, and barely 1.5% Asian, depending on the source. But to judge by American commercials, American families are mostly mixed-race gay or lesbian couples.
That said, for some US shows, representation is inevitable and necessary. Classic "Star Trek" from the late 60s deliberately chose this route, even putting a Russian in among the Enterprise's bridge crew as an optimistic gesture of how well harmonized we would all be in the future. And I didn't mind that at all. In many cases, diverse representation is merely common sense. If I were to watch a show about modern American office culture, and it only ever featured white people, I'd think something was wrong. At the same time, though, if the office featured only black folks, I'd think I'd stumbled onto a show by Tyler Perry.
I agree re: Korean dramas vs. real life. The only time I can go a day without seeing foreigners is when I'm walking across the country and am well between cities. Even then, a non-Korean biker might zip by. A Spanish-speaking lady blew past me and shouted "¡Buen camino!" during one of my earliest trans-Korea walks. You never know when those furriners'll pop up.