While another dispute about black elves flares up on the Internet
While another dispute about black elves in the next film adaptation of Tolkien flares up on the Internet, I will note a funny detail. Often, supporters of cinematic diversity brought to the point of absurdity put forward the following argument: they say that black Africa is a huge sales market, so the capitalists are guided by this growing market. In short, checkmate, white libertarians, your market has decided you! This implies the premise that people watch movies to look in the mirror, and in the most primitive sense (so that the appearance matches). The premise, of course, is idiotic - the same Russians throughout the country watched Mexican TV shows and Bollywood action films.
However, there is another, even more interesting premise. Let's try to imagine how this argument would sound in relation to whites. "So that the Finns have someone to associate themselves with on the screen - let's show the British and Italians." Absurd, right? But with black it's even more absurd. Black Africa is a huge phenotypic and genetic diversity (much more than the non-African population). These are thousands of different ethnic groups and language groups. And they themselves perfectly see these differences. And who does not see - so it's white. That is, the approach "let's show blacks to blacks" is literally based on the premise "all blacks look the same". Isn't that racism? The real racism is, worse than ever.
In fact, of course, no one thinks about any African markets (by the way, they have their own cinema there - no worse than Bollywood). What American producers are really thinking about is how to get into that trendy stream that prevails on American campuses. Considering that people from these campuses make up a significant part of American critics and journalists, they are trying for the sake of their ratings. In short, colonialism is bad. Therefore, everything in the whole world should be arranged as one big American campus.
Mihail Pojarsky 2022-02-11
