movies used to have josh hutcherson in them

Moon Knight being directed and produced by Mohamad Diab, an Egyptian-Arab, SHOWS and it is so important:

-The music is amazing. Having Arabic music in a Marvel show and in the main stream was such a pleasent surprise. None of the orientalist sterotypical crap either. There's many songs and different genres used, fitting the scenes they are put in perfectly. They literally put Arabic music OVER THE MARVEL INTRO! They used real songs from real egyptian and Arab artists and the score is made by an Egyptian composer, Hesham Nazih

Episode 2 credits

Song: El Melouk (meaning the Kings) - Ahmed Saad

-No ugly yellow filter that is shown in most western movies and shows when in the middle east or countries such as mexico to show them as "hot, dusty and foreign". Instead when in Egypt the natural looking lighting is kept and the country is shown with It's beauty, and not just in the dessert:

-The language! In most western movies and shows they have very clearly foreign people "speaking arabic" and im supposed to believe their characters know the language when in reality it is not understandable and it is done horribly. Dont get me started on Eternals where there is a whole speech in "arabic" with not a single word correctly said. At least ad lib it. (to clarify im not talking about the Lebanese actor. He was fluent. Im talking about every other lead)

But in Moon Knight most of the arabic is said by people who can actually speak arabic or well enough by non arabic speakers. The Arabic language and dialects are correct. They also included some Coptic. Oscar Isaac has one line in Arabic and he said it perfectly, sounded like a native. Ethan Hawke had a few that were very accented but still understandable and better than 95% of non arabs pretending to know the language.

-The character of Layla El-Faouly is essential. We needed an Egyptian (secondary) protagonist in this story that is set often in Egypt and based heavily in Egyptian mythology. She is the FIRST Arab female character in the MCU (long overdue tbh) . And the actress herself, May Calamawy, is Palestinian-Egyptian:

The show is doing amazing in authentic representation and avoiding orientalism and sterotypes

SPOILER edit:

FIRST ARAB SUPERHERO NOW LETS GO

eddie brock was only in the post credits scene of nwh because kevin feige knew tom “i’m an actor of course i’ve had gay sex” hardy and andrew “i’m straight but open to any urges” garfield would have yassified the entire movie. in this essay i will-

HAWKEYE | 1.02 Hide and Seek

just a reminder that clint is forever a mood and if you haven’t read any of his comics go read the Matt Fraction run because it is amazing, especially after seeing how much the hawkeye disney+ series has taken after it. Go read it, bro

Especially since a lot of the Hawkeye show is based on this run!! Aesthetically and in the story!

Biderman!!!

Seeing so much Andrew Garfield related posting on here really throws me back to my high school tumblr days lol.

There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            

totes are like if you designed a bag specifically to suck. nothing about a tote bag is at user friendly design. and i love them so much

Since Israeli colonizers keep showing up in the tags to say “uwu but Israeli civilians are innocent! don’t hold us accountable for our government’s war crimes.” here’s some stuff that Israeli civilians have been up to:

And that’s just a handful of reports. So please, Israeli colonizers, don’t sit there and exempt yourself of blame when the system was built to protect you and to ensure your supremacy at the cost of Palestinian lives and the Palestinian identity. When the IOF and the government tear down Palestinian homes or build settlements over historical ground, who do you think lives there?? It’s the Israeli civilians!

If you truly don’t agree with your government then your first instinct shouldn’t be to speak over Palestinians. It’s normal to feel uncomfortable that you’re being held accountable. You should take accountability of the way you are benefiting from our suffering whether you like it or not.

*GASPS* Are you goddamn kidding me??? I fucking hate the lack of infrastructure in my country. God.

Dude if I could take a train 400 miles anywhere I would pay 14 dollars just for a seat, never mind all those amenities. Jeez.

Reasons I remind myself I don’t like my country number who knows what

While this is super cool in and of itself, I’d also like to remind people that modern high speed rail (most of which is in China these days) operates at around 200 miles/hour (China’s fastest train actually operates at 370+ mph but that’s an absolute state of the art maglev, the 200 mph number is average rail speed). If we actually invested in these train systems, you wouldn’t even need an overnight ticket to make a 400 mile trip. To put that in an American context, it would allow you to get from New York to Los Angeles (the famous Cannonball Run taken by car enthusiasts for decades) in about 15 hours, which is 10 hours better than the current Cannonball Run record. With that kind of speed, you could take an evening train halfway across the country (Boston to Chicago would be ~5 hours) for a weekend trip.

Trains are not just more convenient (no driving!), but technologically superior to cars.

I love this series 😂😂

I have got leave from work because of covid so I have been binge-vacaying. And this series is just so relatable. It doesn't make any sense just like my life but so forking good.

The Good Place - S3E12 - Pandemonium

coronavirus stop ittttttt. like for real STOP