Walt Disney Co on Friday said that remarks by activist investor Nelson Peltz criticizing the company for making movies dominated by female and Black actors is evidence that he shouldn’t be on Disney’s board.
Peltz, whose fight to join Disney as a director has become one of the year’s most bitter and closely watched board battles, in an interview with the Financial Times said Disney’s films have become too focused on delivering a message, and not enough on quality storytelling. He specifically took issue with “The Marvels” and “Black Panther.”
“Why do I have to have a Marvel that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that?" Peltz said in the interview, published on Friday. "Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?”
Asked about Peltz’s remarks, a Disney spokesperson responded: “This is exactly why Nelson Peltz shouldn’t be anywhere near a creatively driven company.”
I don’t know much about Peltz but I kind of agree that you don’t NEED to have all black or all women cast. The art should dictate it. But on the flip side, having an all black or all women cast isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Representation in media may not matter to some, but it can make a big impact on others.
Furthermore, most of Africa is black. What were you expecting out of Black Panther???
It’s been a minute since I saw Black Panther. But didn’t they shoehorn Martin Freeman’s character to add some white diversity as a token white guy?
Sure, it isn’t necessary, but would he say the same thing about an all white or all male cast? That’s the default, so having something to show the default isn’t the only option is good too. As a cis straight white man, I don’t give a fuck if there isn’t a straight white man in a movie. Why should I? I see myself everywhere being validated. Let’s give other people extra space because they’ve been denied it for so long.
It’s mostly not necessary, just like it’s not necessary to have an all-white cast. In the last few years I came to realize that colorblind casting doesn’t diminish great art, just like it won’t help bad art to become better. I’m not saying casting should always be colorblind, but in sci-fi and fantasy movies I don’t see skin color or gender matter at all.
I get your point but I mean Wakanda is supposed to be the most technologically advanced society. Why shouldn’t diversity sort of be a given in that context? Because only fellow Africans can be trusted to keep the place a secret?
Well, yeah. Do you not know the history of Black Panther? You just talking out your ass? The whole idea was isolationism in the face of colonialism.
Seems kinda hostile. Africans can be born without pigmentation for one thing. And just because there are colonial powers doesn’t mean a society has to be so bigoted (which they clearly aren’t in universe) to see everyone who doesn’t look like themselves as part of “the others”. They allowed the Avengers in anyways. But my point was meant more like, technology thrives when cultures and people come together.
They completely cut off their society from the rest of the world, it’s not like any African gets a pass in, they don’t allow anyone that isn’t Wakandan. It was like, a pretty significant plot point.
Yea well like I said in the other comment, a society that advanced free from cooperation with other cultures or people seems unlikely. The point of their isolation isn’t lost on me. Still I wouldn’t know why zero tolerance towards that policy would be necessary or sustainable while thriving for technological innovation.
It sounds like you’re implying Africans have an inability to develop a technologically advanced society on their own.
Well how far do you want me to go in refuting that? Would attributing the US space program to the leftover Nazi braintrust be too far? I’m saying what I have said. That no people on their own can truly thrive. We excel when we work together (the moral implications of working with ex white supremacists exist but don’t negate that fact).
But yea sure we’re talking about a work of fiction. I just thought that people here feel that vibe of Disney pushing diversity for the sake of diversity. I feel like that does raise certain valid points about artistic integrity. And if that makes me sound to you like the guy who can’t stand the thought of a female Bond then that’s you reading stuff into it that I haven’t said.
To me turning Arielle black is like making Maleficent the protagonist. If something works (not for me personally but for audiences in general) then it will be rewarded accordingly. Whether i.e. The Marvels worked is up for everyone to decide.
Yes the implication that they sequestered themselves away and somehow progressed alongside the rest of humanity, sorry not only progressing but outpacing the rest of humanity is ridiculous.
It has nothing to do with them being African, the concept is made ridiculous by simply possessing a working knowledge of what human beings are.
I mean why wouldn’t the cast of the Black Panther be mainly black? That’s just weird that you wouldn’t have it that way. Also Captain Marvel and Ms Marvel are both female characters I don’t know what this guy is after here. Why would he pick those examples?
They should do what the comics did when they were told there needed to be more white people in Black Panther and just have him start beating up the KKK.
Because whenever a movie or TV show or video game has anything except a cis hetero white man as the main character, people like this start screeching. They aren’t satisfied with having people that look like themselves represented in the vast majority of main characters. They view any time a character not matching the above description shows up in some kind of media as discrimination against themselves. Any slight reduction in privilage they mistake for real discrimination. They mask this by claiming they’re just concerned with the integrity of the art or some nonsense, especially the gamer gate type crowd.
Anytime a gay character or a female character or someone pops up they start yelling, “why does this character have to be gay? It must be lazy pandering at the expense of a good story.” To which I would pose the same question back to them. Any piece of media featuring a straight cis white man, why does the character have to be a straight white man? Must be lazy pandering at the expense of story.
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s more interesting to have a wide variety of characters and stories in media. Sometimes people are just gay, or are just straight, or just female, or just male. It might have a big impact in a story and it might not. It shouldn’t be “unless this is a story specifically about the gay/female/black experience the character must be straight/male/white by default.” If that is going to be part of that piece of media, great, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be depending on the story being told. You’ll never see this crowd upset with a straight white male character for these reasons though, very transparent.
What all black cast is he talking about? And yes the marvels was all women but… They didn’t even fucking gender swap the characters like Ghostbusters or something like that?
And out of all the fucking MCU it’s the only movie with three female leads.
Edit- Jesus Christ I’m an idiot. It hit me. He’s bitching that Black panther was about black people isn’t he??
Ghostbusters gender swapped the characters? AFAIK, is just a new team of ghostbusters that happens to be all women.
It was a reboot except women this time. So yeah… Gender swapping. Not trying to start all that drama btw… I honestly like the movie. I own it even. It didn’t have shit on the originals that’s for damn sure but… It wasn’t the horror the internet made it out to be.
Was that Ghostbusters really decent? I have the avoided all the new Ghostbusters, not because of the internet outrage crap, but because Ghostbusters 2 was an absolute steaming pile of dog shit. I figured the new reboots / whatever were going to be even worse than that atrocity.
If you’re angry about the critical and financial success that is Black Panther, tells me you’re not an investor, just a racist idiot.
Ok I am about to argue that having an all black cast in Africa is in fact racist.
So I did a very quick look through the 20 “black” actors that appear when you search “black panther cast” in Google. I selected every one with a character name.
Out of 20 exactly 2 are actually from Africa. And they are both from south Africa, notably not anywhere near the central African region of the mythical Wakanda.
So as an example; not only did they get say 90% of their actors to play, say, new Zealanders from Europe but just as a kick in the balls they got the rest from Australia.
As if being a COLOUR would be some great gesture as opposed to a linguistic and cultural identity.
That’s without even touching the numerous examples where marvel has done the opposite and just plain got away with it because it is a piece of European cultural heritage they are using for profit like in the cases of Little mermaid and snow white.
For the love of God just make good movies. People will watch watch whatever tripe Disney puts out that has a large enough marketing budget. But dear God have they put out some “successful” pieces of trash in the last few years. Largely being shit because of the forced diversity.
That’s not even addressing the problem of Black panther not really having anything black in it aside from the name. If they had any real balls they would make a Luke cage movie and actually address the issues instead of putting the word black in stuff and printing money cos it has “marvel”, “disney” and “black” in the same sentence.
Disney is without a doubt very agenda driven lately. Their “represetation” agenda is useless bullshittery at the least and actively harmful to the cultures it tries to represent at worst.
Good on you for admitting you’re a racist. You could have done it quicker tho.
While most of his comment read that way, reread the last two paragraphs. He definitely has a point there, all of the corporate inclusion and diversity is about market share, not addressing real issues.
American, you do not dictate your cultural heritage to the world. Go cry into the bloodstained flag of your failed state.
Dude, your moaning over a fictional story. There is no wakanda for them to draw staff from. Authenticity to the real world is an impossibility from the start, using that as a critique isnt a rational position. They could be authentic to the comic, that’s it. And they made their calls, even if you disagree with them. Maybe they auditioned every willing man in Africa, what do we know? Was it even filmed in Africa or was Wakanda, not being real and all, just CGI and built on a set.
That…tracks with how movies are made, my guy. Just saying.
Beyond that, Black Panther was a huge American production. Millions on millions of dollars on the line. They need actors the director can work with. How many actors do you think there are in Central Africa that speak fluent enough English that the director can wax on motive and speak the superlatively emotive, circularly self-referencing, psuedo-scientific humble-brag that is woke therapy-speak?
How many of those Central African actors in LA at the time of casting?
Don’t get offended on behalf of other people. All you do then is deny them a voice. The perpetually offended hurt every “cause” they match onto because they’re full of shit, just want attention (even if they have a point) and in general are just plain insufferable.
I don’t necessarily agree with you but I’m upvoting you for adding to the conversation, because I think you have some nuggets of truth but miss some of the forest for the trees. Particularly, that they did make Falcon and Winter soldier that addressed some of the issues you’re talking about.
Regardless it’d be cool if Lemmy were like old reddit before it got big, where even if people disagreed with you they’d engage and dispute your points rather than just calling you a racist and hitting downvote. Just makes discourse devolve into “both sides” screaming at each other with their fingers in their ears.
Nelson Peltz was born in 1942. Maybe in 10 more years we won’t have to put up with nearly as much of this bullshit since most of these out of touch racist fucks will hopefully be dead by then
Oh, there’s young racist fucks too.
I was out doing some outdoor work last week, and I’ve basically the skintone of a vampire so I cover up, so I had a big unstylish fishing hat with a neck protector on. And some kids from the local junior high mocked me in terrible Spanish as they walked home. (And by terrible, I mean I could identify how bad it was and I haven’t had Spanish classes in 20+ years and never was fluent in it and I could still tell it was bad.)
I’m not even Hispanic, but it made me mad enough with it happening just one time that it hurts inside to know similar stuff happens on a daily basis to other people. And some of it totally comes from young racist fucks.
