Dammit I'm bored: Diversity in Movies or how you don't exist

[Dr_Liszt]

So I was listening to this video blog about Mad Max and the girl say that Mad Max is just an example of white supremacist fantasies, white people's blindness, and overall white fantasies where in their world, they tend to wipe out all the minorities, creating this universe where the human race is all white people.

And she gives as an example Boyhood set in Texas over the course of 12 years (or however long that shitfuck of a movie was) where the latino population grew to around 40%. Where are the latinos in Boyhood? They enter an university, it's all white, the streets, all white, everyone is white in Texas. On Lena Dunham's show set in New York, one of the most diverse cities in the world, suddenly becomes white in her show. She mentioned some movies about Detroit where the majority is Black, gets incredibly white washed and feature mostly white people. The movie HER, set in the future, all white people, which brings me to Mad Max which did feature two women of color in it, but surrounded by world of white people, if you look at Australia's demographics, you should have been able to see at least some natives or asian warboys, but no. Everyone is fucking white. So what is this? Do we not exist? Where do we go? So now this ruined movies for me, because now I'm going to be checking at the background looking for anyone or anything that isn't white.

So it's kind of creepy. For one it tells us that white people don't think about diversity because they are not affected by race, so in their "fantasies" they tend to write about white people, so ok, whatever. But what it is concerning is, like for example in the movie HER which is at L.A. and you live and you go to shoot there, you have to see not everyone in that city is fucking white! Not everyone you make eye contact with is white. Or the movie Peter Pan with Rooney Mara, even if you can see people of color in the trailers, they turned a native population into a white population. White people are the ones who get to be human, they are the ones who survive the apocalypse, they are the ones who get to experience the future, in white people's minds we get to disappear or appear only to fill in a quota. And what's funny to me is that the girl wasn't even talking about main characters or strong characters, she was talking about extras. So it makes it even more sad or creepy.

And also it's kind of funny because white people are a global minority, and the world is getting browner and browner every day. The future is going to look majority brown over white, anywhere. Also some of their excuses for this is very white supremacist nationalist "Africa for africans, asians for asians, europe for everyone" bullshit. Like saying "only white people have to be diverse but what about you??!!!!! " Well if I made a movie set in Guatemala, where 50% of guatemalans are mayan, but all you can see is fair skinned latinos. Even if mayans are segregated, "where are the mayans?" is a fair question to ask! "Where are all the brazilian blacks in telenovelas at?" And a lot of the stories set in Africa, like the ones about the genocide, feature white people too. I can understand movies set in places like Iceland, Argentina, many of the Asian cities where there is a homogeneity going on. But if your movie is set in L.A, there's no reason why we shouldn't exist.

So in conclusion, I want to tell people. I exist. And I will survive any apocalypse and become a warboy, I will ride through the gates of Vallhala, all shiny and chrome.

[Anakin McFly]

I remember being surprised at the racial diversity in NYC, because previously I'd only seen it in movies where NYC was almost exclusively white; IRL it was closer to half. (checks wikipedia) Yep, 44% white.

In a similar vein, I read somewhere that movie background extras are on average 2/3 male and 1/3 female.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

What I took from this is that a global minority has been able to find success in representation in movies. What's the majority's excuse?

[Cassius Clay]

Hello, warboy.

I think I've seen the video you're talking about.

[Dr_Liszt]

I like her videos. I don't watch them often, I tend to ignore them sometimes because they are too long and I have the attention span of a 3 year old.

I also liked when she said "white people don't notice this for the same reason walking people don't notice the lack of wheelchair ramps." And it blew my mind how your perception of the world can change just by having one tiny "disadvantage".