Hello everyone, and welcome to the third installment of Brain Food At The Movies, wherein I talk about Star Trek – Into Darkness!
It’s easily one of the most shallow, pandering, lazy pieces of writing slapped on screen that I’ve ever seen, and includes an unfortunate amount of whitewashing in replacing the character of Khan with a white guy, Super Benederp Cucumbatch, when he had been Indian in the original series and played by the most excellent Ricardo Montalban.
As it turns out, the reboot of The Fantastic Four films may cast a new Johnny Storm, and word has it that he could be . . .
Wait for it . . .
. . . black.
(Which also means that Sue Storm may also wind up being . . . . *whisper* black.)
Shhhhh!
I know we’re not supposed to be noticing that, being that we’re all post-racial and colorblind and all. But it doesn’t stop folks from pitching a fucking fit. Some shit about it betraying the original vision for the character or something. Y’know, kinda like Heimdall in Thor.
If anybody has seen Chronicle, the option of having Michael B. Jordan play Johnny Storm makes a whole lot of sense. Young, hot-headed dude who loves the fact that he’s a fucking superhero? Yeah, I can see it.
But when it’s Benadryl Cucumbersnatch playing an iconic man of color villain who was so awesome that even James T. Motherfucking Kirk had to show respect, all of a sudden it’s about the best person for the job.
Riiiiight.
I seent yo’ ass.
And over at Autostraddle, they show what we’ve known all along: television writing staffs remain overwhelmingly white and male.
Could this be why representation for everyone who is NOT a straight white dude is so fucking abysmal?
(Note that the study does not account for women of color.)
Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special episode of Brain Food… At the Movies!
The movie that I reviewed? The Host!
No, not the awesome South Korean Sci-fi horror film from 2006, but the very boring, rather disturbing (for all the wrong reasons) movie based off of Stephenie Meyer’s book of the same name.
While not as bad as I thought it was going to be, I certainly did not come out of this sober…
So I dithered about posting on these because I don’t like bringing the authors any additional publicity. For many books, the worst enemy is obscurity. But I had to share my pain, folks.
Remember Victoria Foyt and Save the Pearls? Remember how we all wondered how any author could hit such serious WTF territory?
I bring you the latest Foyt-esque forays from two other authors. You’re welcome.
As I said, I will be talking about this roleplaying rulebook called Kindred of the East (KotE) and I have. But first, I made a mistake in saying that KotE dealt in South Asia. I was misremembering but for any South Asian readers, despair not! White Wolf already covered the region, or at least just India, in the main Vampire: The Masquerade books. You get the Ravnos clan which are basically Indian vampires organised into the Hindu caste system and whose western brethren are stereotypes of Roma people.
The Ravnos was also originally written as just stereotypes of Roma people, complete with the clan nickname “Gypsies”. And White Wolf also once released Gypsies, where Roma people are more magic than even vampires and werewolves.
Then you also have the fanatical Muslim assassin Assamite vampires.
As for vampires in Africa, well, I would be making a complete arse of myself talking about cultures which I have nearly no familiarity with. But looking at their track record so far… The title is Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom for anyone curious, by the way.
So after saying all that, how well do you think KotE would fare?
Sometimes, I read RPG rulebooks just for fun, which to me is imagining what kind of character I would make if I could play in a campaign. Just now, I finished skimping through Blue Dragon, White Tiger, which I guess is a supplement for Hong Kong Action Theater! (HKAT!). I don’t know and don’t really care.
I have not read HKAT! yet but I assume it is based on roleplaying scenarios where the player characters shooting gangsters with a pistol in each hand like Chow Yun-Fat, jump from building to building while fending off relentless thugs like Jackie Chan, or being just damn fucking cool like Michelle Yeoh. Well Blue Dragon, White Tiger is supposed to be based on wuxia films.
My debut article here on Ars Marginal talked about wuxia being a uniquely Chinese genre with a long history behind it and why non-Chinese should not claim to write wuxia. With a special focus on white people because, well, what other group of people can proudly claim such a high track record of cultural appropriation.
Let’s look take a look at the book cover.
Hello everyone and welcome to a special episode of Brain Food I like to call… Playwright’s Delight!
In this episode, I discuss the script of Shawn C Harris’ play, Tulpa, or Anne & Me. I hope everyone enjoys it!
And here it is on youtube as well.
Also, here are the links I mentioned in the video:
Racist Bigot Maryann Johanson defends the Onion Tweet. Read as she completely misses the point about satire, history, racism, the treatment of black women in American history…!
It’s still February, so y’all ain’t off the hook with this Black shit just yet.
Just kidding. This is Ars Marginal. Every month is Black History Month here. Or, to be more accurate, Everybody But Straight White Men’s History Month.
Anyway, this is something of a follow-up post to this one I made a while back about the Strong Black Woman stereotype and my identifying with the Head Bad-Ass Mother Fucking Bitch In Charge (HBAMFBIC) Regina Mills (aka the Evil Queen) from ABC’s Once Upon A Time.
I read this Tumblr post (and you should too) when a line caught me by surprise and hit me right in the Blackness.
That is not a stepmother. That is a house slave.
When you look at Regina’s situation, that’s exactly what the fuck she is.
As promised I’m going to do the casting call of just the three playable characters in this open world game. Now since LA Noire (darn good game) has that facial motion capture software. I think that it work with the game to capture the actors. Now that’s out of the way. Here’s the cast. Continue reading
