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MILLENNIAL_FIRE

                                             October 16, 2016
                                                             

                                                             WHITEGHOST
                                                         
In all my babbling about the great ScarJo "Ghost in 
the Shell" scandalette, I don't think I've really 
gotten across how I feel about this discussion.                 
                                                         
The trouble is that the grounds of the   
dispute seem so trivial, I find it hard to
really get going on it...  though actually
the fact that it's so trivial is one of
the things that bothers me: however you feel
about the Hollywood decision-making process,
however you might want to argue about
other casting decisions, this particular
one was pretty obviously not the one you should
be going on the attack about.

This is a point made immediately by almost
everyone who is actually familiar with the
material-- the people who are objecting seem
to know next to nothing about it, and when
their ignorance is pointed out, they just
shrug and double-down on the attack.  They
have no counter-argument, they rarely
even see the need to contrive a weak one.                    How hard can it be?

The remarkably low intellectual standards        "It may be true nothing
on display here leave me nearly speechless--     requires this role to be
now I can hear you going "well, what do you      played by an Asian actress,
expect from a bunch of Hollywood fan-boys        nevertheless it's a role
and girls", but what I expect from them is       where no one would find it
to put some energy into thinking about the       odd to cast an Asian woman,
stuff that they claim they really care about.    and there are so few such
                                                 roles, this amounts to a
The more I look into it, the more people I       missed opportunity, not just
listen to, the clearer it gets that these        in terms of advancing the
guys are double-plus-good duck-speakers who      state of racial attitudes,
can't think their way out of a paper bag.        but just from an esthetic
                                                 point of view of extending
And it's the relatively trivial ground of        the range of the look of
this dispute that makes this clear, there        Hollywood movies."
simply isn't a lot of wiggle room,

If we were talking about something really                       (May 14, 2018)
critical like a foreign military
intervention, at least in cases like              Actually, I think I saw
those the situation is typically very             someone go with the "missed
complicated and the results of action or          opportunity" line recently,
inaction are hard to estimate...                  months after the dispute
                                                  has faded away.
  If this is it if this is the best
  we expect in the way of collective          
  intelligence from our critically        
  engaged youth, I despair for the        
  future.                                 
  
         
                                            THE_FUTURE_IS_NOW



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