• LordCrom@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Queue Dave Chappelle and his sketch ‘Negrodamas’

    Quote

    I predict a movie called The Last Black Man on Earth, starring Tom Hanks

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Hollywood Executives can collectively only name at most seven actors at a given time. An entire nine-digit annual industry run by a bunch of coked-up goldfish.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        They’re run by the same average people who work for them. You don’t need to be an idiot to fuck up running something as large and complicated as a trans-national corporation. You don’t need to be a genius to coast in a position that already prints money.

        We’re simply not that different from one another. The genius/idiot dichotomy is far more about variances in education, culture, and propagandized bigotry than finding actual differences in intellect.

  • insaneinthemembrane@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Same as when SNL wanted men to play female politicians in sketches when Amy Poehler and Tina Fey were right there and smashed it in the end.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      24 hours ago

      If Hollywood ever did a film about Gaza they would unironically use Gal Godot in the role of a Palestinian woman.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.worldOP
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        23 hours ago

        It also be “both sides have something to learn from each other!” Oscar bait a la Crash or Green Book.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          19 hours ago

          I was going to suggest that it would be done with lots of tearful emotion, but then I remembered that Gal can’t actually act, so maybe it would be more of a “after saying the words, turning and looking towards the horizon in an heroic pose” medium shot moving into a panorama showing little children in the background.

          (With the right music to pull people’s emotional strings, obviously)

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        20 hours ago

        No doubt with lines like “They only hate Israel because of their religion” and “The IDF is protecting me, despite being Palestinian”

    • wuzzlewoggle@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      So it was 30 years ago. I feel like, even though things are far from perfect now, nowadays a comment like this would draw quite a few more critical looks than back then.

        • wuzzlewoggle@feddit.org
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          1 day ago

          Sure, but knowing how fucked something is and actually speaking out about it are two very different things.

      • qarbone@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        It was also 30 years closer to Harriet Tubman, in a time when black civil rights were not even as sanded smooth as they appear now.

          • qarbone@lemmy.world
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            17 hours ago

            And he’s fucking everyone instead of just black people. We had a DEI program to rollback again. If someone calls me the n-word, I can post that on Tiktok and have a 50 40% chance of getting them fired.

            Shit’s bad but shit’s almost always been bad for black people in America, so you mark the little peaks.

      • zout@fedia.io
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        1 day ago

        Why would you think that? I was around in 1994, and if anything, it got worse.

        • wuzzlewoggle@feddit.org
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          24 hours ago

          No, sorry. Go watch any sitcom from the nineties. There is a lot of stuff in there (racism, sexism, homophobia) that would cause a shitstorm these days.

          Maybe you lived in a progressive bubble back then (good for you) but as someone born in the nineties who grew up in the early 00s, I have to say, ignorance was a lot more tolerated back then, even in the 00s.

          • zout@fedia.io
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            21 hours ago

            So you’re looking at an era that you probably don’t remember actively being a part of, and you compare it to the world you do remember. I don’t think I was the one to live in a bubble*. Also, have you seen Musk do the Hitler salute on television? Nobody tried pulling shit like that in 1994.

            *I lived, and still live, in a very rural area, which is not know for being progressive.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Or Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra.

          Cleopatra was by ancestry mostly Greek. So I don’t get what you mean.

          Most of her subjects weren’t quite “black” either.

          Sorry for this interjection, but I hate wrong corrections, especially when they give up cute chains of thought like “queen of (hellenistic, that’s my own addition) Egypt -> Egypt’s in the African continent -> black”.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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            24 hours ago

            Yeah, the thing a lot of people seem to miss is just how major of a geographic barrier the Sahara is. As a consequence, northern Africans weren’t generally very black for most of history.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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              18 hours ago

              Greek and ME people sometimes look very light. And face powders too exist.

              So I wouldn’t say there’s anything too weird with her appearance. I suppose portrayal of Americans in North Korean war films is weirder.

        • doug@lemmy.today
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          1 day ago

          Or Emma Stone in Aloha, or Max Minghella in The Social Network, or Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      It’s such an insane story that I wonder what the other side of it is. It’s easy to imagine the guy just having got out of a meeting ten minutes earlier with “if you don’t get Julia Roberts into a movie by the end of the week, I’ll see you never work in this town again!” ringing in his ears.

  • Destide@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    This is crazy, I mean Roberts is from the South and Tubman from the north, no one’s going to believe it!

    • tino@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Probably not, but she’s an important figure of the American history. The real question, though, is who will know about Harriet Tubman in a few years, once she gets erased from American history books.

    • JandroDelSol@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      TL;DR, she was an insanely brave black woman who helped a metric fuck ton of slaves escape the south.

      • Carl
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        1 day ago

        Not everyone is from North America. That is like me asking you, does “Dr. Kwame Nkrumah” mean anything to you?

        • andros_rex@lemmy.worldOP
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          23 hours ago

          Tbh, it should. American educations don’t touch Africa barring a dip into Egypt, which usually compresses the dynasties in a way that does nothing for a deeper understanding. Even as someone with a BA in history, that watched the course listing like a hawk for “history of the Sahel” or “history of the Mali empire” or some lovely 3000-4000 course - nothing.

          I should have been taught who Nkrumah was. And Léopold Senghor, and Kenyatta…

          Instead, I lean on The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. Which is a good book, but by a journalist, not a historian.

        • Soulg@ani.social
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          24 hours ago

          If only that question was a direct response to someone talking about an American historical figure by name.

        • Captain Aggravated
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          1 day ago

          Okay, Harriet Tubman, born into slavery in the early 1800s, escaped slavery, probably best known today for making 13 trips to the South and guiding 70 slaves on their escape to free states via a system of secret routes, sympathizers and safe houses referred to as The Underground Railroad. Tubman went on to serve as a spy for the Union army during the American civil war, and was a figure in the women’s suffrage movement, surviving into the 20th century.

          So, the fact that she was a black woman is kind of important to Harriet Tubman’s lore, and casting Julia Roberts in the role is rather inappropriate.

          The Underground Railroad had nothing to do with actual trains, but they used a lot of railroad related terminology as code speak. Trail guides were referred to as “conductors,” safe houses were “stations,” etc. Very little of it was actually underground; I’m sure a few slaves hid in root cellars or caves along the way, but there were no tunnels. Escapees were sometimes carried by boat or train but most traveled on foot and/or by wagon. There’s a sort of folklore image of slaves traveling at night under the cover of darkness, navigating by the North Star. Allegedly, the song “Follow The Drinkin’ Gourd” was a slave song that contained coded instructions for navigating along the Underground Railroad by landmarks along the trail and by using Merak and Dubhe in Ursa Major to identify Polaris…I’m pretty sure this is 20th century embellishment to the story but it’s a prominent visual, kind of like Johnny Appleseed’s pot hat.

          This bit of history is taught so widely in American schools that the term “underground railroad” has just become our word for a secret, grassroots network of routes, safe houses and guides for transporting refugees out of danger.

    • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      The last Samurai is not played by Tom Cruise. He plays a guy who gets to know and grows to respect the last Samurai and Japanese culture.

      Ken Watanabe as Lord Moritsugu Katsumoto, he plays the eponymous “Last Samurai.”

      Clearly you have not even watched the damn movie. Or what is your point?

      But we are all good with a black woman playing the real life British Anne Boleyn?

      Man, can’t wait until we find out which white actor will play Barack Obama in his biopic. I mean, diversity is our strength.

      • TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        1-You had to actually watch the full movie to get any of that context

        2-It’s still Cruise’s face front and center on every piece of promotional art

        3-As much as I hate that this is true, the vast majority of people who saw that movie did not do so because they heard Ken Watanabe was in it

        • Spaniard@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          It’s also not a “white character playing a japanese character” it’s inspired by Jules Brunet.

          Also Samurai es plural too, Ken Watanabe wasn’t the last samurai, it was all of them.

        • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
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          23 hours ago
          1. Who is in the habit of starting to watch a movie and like, walk out half way? Most people watch movies from beginning to end. Like what are you saying? People are not supposed to know every plot beat or point in a movie if they have never watched it or read the script.

          Did you know that in the Avengers movie, they do not really or actually avenge anything? You would have to watch it to get that, I guess.

          1. Uh, so? It was an American production about an American fictitious character, starring one of the biggest, most recognised actors and movie draws of the last 35+ years. Fail to understand the point… Did you know that Japanese movies spotlight Japanese actors/characters on their covers even if the movie is set in the USA or Europe or deals with their culture? Is it incorrect when they do it?

          2. Why do you hate the fact that most Americans at the time did not know who Watanabe was? That’s nonsensical. It is not anyone’s job to know actors from other countries. Clearly, the biggest draw was Tom Cruise both in the USA and for the international market, he is still a huge draw, even today. I would say that most of the world did not know who Watanabe was, outside of Japan at that point. I would say that most people may not know who he is even today. Unless you point out the Last Samurai or the Godzilla or Batman movies first. Despite he being in tons of other projects, specially in Japan TV.

          Edit: Lots of Watanabe haters here.

          • TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            You’ve given me a fair bit to think about, but looking at your responses to most of the other comments in this thread, it seems like you’re just out for a good argument. I have no problem with that (within reason) but I’ll be honest, I just don’t have the energy to engage with it today.

            Again, you have given me a good amount to ponder, I hope there are no hard feelings. My apologies if I insulted or upset you in any way. I hope you have a good day

          • PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
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            20 hours ago

            I mean, they go back in time and save half the population of the universe from being murdered, seems pretty avengeful…

            • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
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              22 hours ago

              Uh, it’s a free country and neither of us are paying for the server space. Albeit I do not know why you want to be such a white supremacist or focus on that. But c’est la vie. You do you, friend! No judgement.

              Maybe add a PIC of Watanabe. But if not, post a bunch more photos of Tom Cruise, his new movie is about to come out! More eyes on the ball, I say. Cheers!

      • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        23 hours ago

        So, you missed the link…? Or, just lost your sense of humor in the war?

        ETA: when did i say that Tom Cruise was the last samurai…?

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I have watched the movie. It shows a European in a role absolutely impossible in upper layers of Japanese society of that time.

    • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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      20 hours ago

      What are they gonna do next? The Last Ni*** on Earth, starring Tom Hanks?

      • this is a quote from Chapelle’s show, just to be clear