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 like making a movie about Themyscira, (DC I know) and having one of the main characters be a man.
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?
Everett Ross is associated with Black Panther in the comics as well… And is basically a token there. But his existence predates the Disney acquisition.
That wasn’t about diversity, it was about having an outsider around so they could explain things to him (and therefore the audience)
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.
That’s cool. You can go make that thing because that has absolutely nothing to do with Wakanda.
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.
a society that advanced free from cooperation with other cultures or people seems unlikely
True. The writers probably agree. Hence Wakanda literally having been built on top of a literal mountain of magic space science unobtainium that makes science go brrr practically by just being there.
Oh, and with magic drugs that allow Wakandan leaders to not only single handedly beat up any would be invaders, but also share the wisdom and acquired knowledge of all their ancestors.
Seems quite less unlikely and unsustainable when you take into account those two little details. 🤷♂️
Not trying to point out lack of realism in a work of fiction anyways. I was just trying to suggest that diversity hires could’ve been the name of the Disney game on those movies just as they are on many others. When it comes to representation there’s definitely no need to diversify a majority black cast. At least not for the sake of more caucasian faces. But I really do feel the words “the art should dictate it”. Black Panther’s source material was probably honored quite faithfully.
You think that part is ‘unlikely’ in a movie about people with super powers?
You got me there ngl. I’m not saying Black Panther has plot holes, I’m not even saying that the cast should’ve been more diverse because Disney or whatever. I was just trying to level with @hddsx@lemmy.ca saying the art should dictate the content instead of executives bending it to their will. In the case of Black Panther it was probably the art or the source material anyways so no real issue there.
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.
I’m just letting you know your previous comment had racist undertones.
Your comment about turning Ariel black also has racist undertones. Mermaids aren’t real, maybe the black actress was better suited for the role in ways we don’t know about?
Well I think you were now given the chance to judge the book by something other than its cover. If you stick with your original assessment that’s entirely your prerogative. I was giving Arielle as an example of something that worked.
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.
From the Lee power duo of Stan and Spike, coming this summer: BlacKKK Panther
All this guy is basically saying is “why make a movie that isn’t exactly the way I think?”
Embedded in his mindset is the idea that black people don’t deserve their own audience.
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.
Just ask where all their inclusive screeching was back when it was an all white male cast in everything. If they shut up back then they need to shut it now.
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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??
He’s also upset that the black panther wore a black suit.
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.
Eh…if you didn’t like 2 then you probably wont like these either. Personally I like them all. Girl ghostbusters was absolutely the weakest for me but still dumb fun. Honestly did something i would have KILLED to see explored in a sequel. The feds showing up and basically being like ‘yes we know god damn well there are ghosts now will you shut the fuck up about it?’ Afterlife was god damn good to me. Something at the end was pretty controversial for some but absolutely fucking destroyed me.
But like I said…I know some people hated 2 and…yeah. if you are one then the new ones probably wont be your thing either.
It was a good movie. Not great, but good enough to enjoy it without a single eye-roll…
In my opinion, there’s already a great Ghostbusters movie. I don’t need to see any more. I’d rather them do something new than drag that (or any other) IP around for easy money.
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.
His point was that none of the actors cast in the film actually come from the fictional country of Wakanda.
He did his research on it and everything.
His last two paragraphs and your entire comment are baseless assertions that are at best pointless cynicism (“they’re doing the right thing but only to make money” doesn’t counter the fact that they’re doing the right thing) and at worst it’s regurgitating current American right-wing propaganda (Branding “inclusion and diversity” as bad or outright illegal is a current right-wing political agenda item. It is designed to harm minorities by removing programs that have proven effective at lowering racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in schools and the workplace).
It’s not a good look for either of you.
Like I said to that guy, did you even watch the movie? “Addressing real issues” was core to the movie. Michael B. Jordan’s character was motivated by hundreds of years of colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and racism faced by black people the world over, and specifically in the U.S.
American, you do not dictate your cultural heritage to the world. Go cry into the bloodstained flag of your failed state.
I’m not American.
Sorry I just heard racist bullshit and knee jerked.
Ass-u-me.
Er, yeah we do in fact dictate it. It’s kinda our whole thing.
I think maybe the young folks haven’t heard of cultural imperialism?
You don’t think black panther “address(ed) the issues”? Did you miss all of Michael B. Jordan’s character’s motivation? Or did you just not even watch the movie?
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.
The mother of a racist is always pregnant.
Time for an abortion.
Hate to break it to you but the majority of Americans disagreed with interracial marriage until the fucking mid-90s.
Nelson Peltz is corporate cancer. He specializes in fleecing investors. He’s a far-right piece of shit. Fuck him especially.
Fun story when they made that psycho Transformers movie with the laminated age of consent law and the product placement transformer made out of Oreo vending machines, Peltz’s daughter is the teenager it’s supposed to be legal to molest and Peltz was on the Oreo company board.
Wait, what? What psycho transformers movie is this?!
Edit: nevermind. I looked up the scene. Whatever the fuck was that?!
Link?
What the fuck?
Probably the first movie where “starring Mark Wahlberg” isn’t its biggest problem.
People like this shouldn’t ever be considered ‘creative’. Dunno how we got here but glad they are choosing to reverse that decision.
I’m not having fun…
Not that I have anything against women
Ahh, the misogynist’s “no homo.”
“My mother was a woman”
Martin Freeman is not black. Park Seo-joon is not a woman. Samuel L Jackson is not a woman—motherfucker.
The Disney philosophy, at this point, is that people who have been unrepresented for years will take issue towards efforts that are not strictly made with inclusivity in mind and those who have been represented will accept it as progress, then the small few who take issue with “wokeness” will watch it because “it’s Disney”
Their gamble is paying off because lets face it, 90% of the world with a TV screen has grown up with Disney.
So while you might disagree with Disney’s take on X, Y or Z, that fucking mouse is so engrained on us that we will accept whatever bullshit they put forward
And let’s be honest, it’s not like they’re pushing anything immoral, obscene, etc.
Their recent movies have been obscene insults to writing.
Yep. I’ve had no interest in watching the remakes but that’s because I grew up with watching the originals as a kid but if I had kids then I would take them to see the remakes while they can watch the originals too. It’s a non issue imo. The remakes aren’t essential viewing for anyone.
Why should I care about this? Do any of these people care about producing better entertainment that is not pandering or exploitative?
Haha no. One side cares about starting Brave, Important Conversations while the other side cares about money.
AGREED! Why should I use BLACK ACTORS just because the movie takes place in a country with MAJORITY Black People? And WHY on God’s Green Earth should I cast WOMEN to play FEMALE Superheroes?
Be careful with the “majority” part of it because that opens the doors for lots of racists to whine about how a lot of traditionally white characters are replaced by black characters. What you’re looking for is that the point is they are black. Their blackness is essential to the characters.
For something like, say, the little mermaid, her being white is not even remotely essential to her character. Which is why no one should be even remotely offended by the fact that it has been played by a black actress.
Of course you can also swap in female for black and the point is the same.
Neither of those casts were all anything, apart from human.
Found the alien activist
Why would you have a movie set in Africa have a nearly all black cast? He’s seriously asking that? Apparently you don’t need basic intelligence to be a billionaire. How often does he ask why shows like Billions or Succession have to be about white families?
Ah, yes, the guy that forced his daughter to get a staring role in Avatar playing a 100% API role.
