[rendall]

Don't worry, it's not you. People who are quick to call someone racist are nearly always struggling internally with their own racism. To their credit they feel quite a lot of shame about that, but until it's resolved they can be quite unpleasant.

[burnished]

Let me offer a different perspective: the complaint is inconsistent and solely focused on race, which makes it appear racist.

[rendall]

I think GP is not arguing his case well, especially not to Americans, who come with a preset cluster of expectations and arcane protocols to signal that we "get it".

And, sure, anti-Black racism might be his prime motivation. But, just assuming it's so, when someone questions American appropriation of his own culture's literary traditions is ... it's frankly imperialist.

"Americans agree: Italian who questions American depictions of Italian cultural traditions is just a bigot"

Have a bit more charity.

[mcphage]

The only part of the depiction he’s complaining about is race, though.

[rendall]

Dunno. Ask. Listen. Be humble.

Have a hypothesis and then do your best to falsify that. Give him all of the charity he needs to refute your guess that he's a bigot.

"So you say that there is a convention in Italian literature of depicting other-worldly beings as having freakishly white skin. Would you be ok with the Pinocchio reboot if the same African-descended actress portrayed the fairy, but were instead made up with freakishly white skin?"

If he doesn't refute your generous chances, then guess what? You found a bigot. Congratulations.

If everyone were more parsimonious about it, calling someone a racist or white supremacist or a Nazi would actually have some meaning again. At this point it's just coming to mean "This person disagrees with me and I don't like it".

Remember, these depictions are intended to be immersive. If some element reminds the watcher that they are watching a story, and they find it difficult to suspend their disbelief, they're not going to like it. That could mean an actor with clearly incorrect ancestry for the role.

For example, in the real world, a rural village of people whose ancestors have been in the same region for hundreds or thousands of years are going to look a lot alike. This is why Finns do not look like Khoisan. Everyone knows this. No one has a problem with this.

If your fantasy setting has human beings (or humanoid beings) living for generations together in a small rural village, and you just throw a bunch of different real-world ancestries in there, a Khoisan burgher and a Finnish tavern keeper, that's going to need some kind of explanation. Highlighting that as a problem isn't automagically racist. Maybe it's "magic world" and people there just have that kind of reproductive variability. Cool. Whatever it is, it needs a reason. But without that, it comes off as immersion-disrupting tokenism.

So, no, I don't think "focusing on race" is an automatic signifier of racism.

[wizofaus]

"Would you be ok with the Pinocchio reboot if the same African-descended actress portrayed the fairy, but were instead made up with freakishly white skin?"

Including the word "freakishly" is deliberately setting up the expectation that nobody would think that was acceptable. But I'd like to think we should be able to live in a world where if being literally white-coloured was a key component of a character, then yes, a black actor should be able to play the character wearing whatever costume/makeup or using whatever special effects are necessary to pull off the part. Unfortunately I'm not sure we are in that world yet - the most well-known case of a black public figure appearing "white" still gets accused of betraying his racial background, even if it's almost certain it was entirely due to a skin condition (Vitiligo, a diagnosis confirmed on autopsy).

[rendall]

> "freakishly"

In another post, GP discussed how "wax-like, otherworldly" white skin is a signifier of supernatural goodness. My brain translated that into "freakish". If he had said "ruddy, tends to tan in the sun" or no adjective qualifier, I'd have just in turn said "white" without qualifier.

[mcphage]

> Give him all of the charity he needs to refute your guess that he's a bigot.

> So, no, I don't think "focusing on race" is an automatic signifier of racism.

It sounds like you're saying "if he acts like a bigot, but he says he's not a bigot, then give him the benefit of the doubt."

[rendall]

I'm not sure how what I wrote sounds like that, because if I wanted to write that, I would have. It's a lot simpler, for one.

It's a difficult concept, rhetorical charity, especially in today's climate of flinging the most reprehensible accusation in our repertoire at the slightest provocation.

As I said before, a lot of the excesses of "wokeness" is projected overcompensation for private shame about bigoted feelings.

[peoplefromibiza]

> The only part of the depiction he’s complaining about is race

Am I?

Are you sure?

Can you quote me on that please?

The blue fairy is an important part of my culture, at least for me.

If someones rewrites it using all the power of a conglomerate like Disney, that puts at risk our shared culture and heritage.

For me she's gonna be a woman with blue air, for someone younger it will be a bald black woman, that has no direct representation in the society where I live.

I don't care who the actress is or what the color of her skin is, it's just not the "Fata Turchina", it's another character.

Simple as that.

Try doing that with Sherlock Holmes and see what happens.

What would happen if a Chinese company made a movie where Martin Luther King is an Albanian immigrant who came to Italy with the Vlora ship in 1991 to become a supporter of immigrants rights and got killed by a mobster in a fight over a pool game?

[wizofaus]

I would totally watch a Sherlock Holmes played by Benedict Cumberbatch dressed up as bald black woman!

Look, if having the blue fairy's character being reinterpreted in such a way is simply something you'd prefer not to watch, that's cool. Maybe it bothers you that a generation of new viewers will absorb a different version of a story for which the orginal has a particular place in your heart, but that's just how culture works - for most of human existence stories weren't written down and changed on each retelling anyway. It doesn't lessen their importance or impact.

Having said all that - I've yet to hear many examples of modern adaptations of music in classical tradition written 100s of years ago that I can accept as any sort of improvement. I can't quite put my finger on why there's such a difference.

[rendall]

> What would happen if a Chinese company made a movie where Martin Luther King is an Albanian immigrant who came to Italy with the Vlora ship in 1991 to become a supporter of immigrants rights and got killed by a mobster in a fight over a pool game?

You're not very good at arguing your case. I see where you're trying to go with this, but that analogy sucks.

Look, Disney just ruins everything. I grew up with the A.A. Milne books for Winnie the Pooh. As a child, I had a picture in my mind for all of the characters, appearance, voice, manner. Disney's Winnie the Pooh is not it, and they have such cultural dominance that their vision can seem to overwrite the original.

I've had to just learn to not sweat it. Blade Runner 2049? Excellent movie, but I do not consider it canon. The original had a sense of humor and hopefulness that 2049 just absolutely lacked.

My Disney+ shows that I'll have access to Pinocchio on September 8th. Not sure if you have already seen it, but if not, give it a watch with an open mind. You might like it.

[mcphage]

> For me she's gonna be a woman with blue air, for someone younger it will be a bald black woman

Weird that you spend more time complaining about her skin color than her hair.

> Try doing that with Sherlock Holmes and see what happens.

Shit yeah, sign me up.

> What would happen if a Chinese company made a movie where Martin Luther King is an Albanian immigrant who came to Italy with the Vlora ship in 1991 to become a supporter of immigrants rights and got killed by a mobster in a fight over a pool game?

They might well do that. But it’s different when it’s a real person than an imaginary fairy. And also when you change his appearance versus when you change what he stands for.

[rendall]

From Wikipedia:

Collodi often used the Italian Tuscan dialect in his book. The name Pinocchio is a combination of the Italian words pino (pine), and occhio (eye); Pino is also an abbreviation of Giuseppino, the diminutive for Giuseppe (the Italian form of Joseph); one of the men who greatly influenced Collodi in his youth was Giuseppe Aiazzi, a prominent Italian manuscript specialist who supervised Collodi at the Libreria Piatti bookshop in Florence. Geppetto, the name of Pinocchio's creator and “father,” is the diminutive for Geppo, the Tuscan pronunciation of ceppo, meaning a log, stump, block, stock or stub.

It seems to me there's a lot of cultural references here that are elided for non-Tuscan audiences. I imagine that could be frustrating. I think it would not be easy for Americans to be sympathetic to this kind of thing.

Hey, this is a cool song. It's a bit how Europeans can feel about American hegemonic cultural dominance: https://youtu.be/Rr8ljRgcJNM