IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power • Hacker News Board

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#621

Post by scarmig » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #546

scarmig wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was watching Shameless the other day, and it's a drama-comedy about a dysfunctional poor family in the Chicago South Side. The family is white, and most of the main characters are white. This is really weird, if you've ever been to the South Side. But pretty much everyone quickly gets over that and ends up immersed in it. The issue with the Rings of Power and similar things isn't the anachronistic racial compositio…

> The issue with the Rings of Power and similar things isn't the anachronistic racial composition of the cast. Note that it's a myth that everyone in pre-modern Europe was white. This is a white supremacist trope easily proven wrong by, say, digging into the representation of POC in medieval European art. https://www.npr.org/2021/05/06/994325620/going-medieval-on-w... https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/5-myths-a…

That centers race a bit much. There weren't black people in medieval Europe, but nor were there white people. We're projecting contemporary racial categories onto a past where they didn't exist. The question of whether there were black people in Europe is akin to asking what did people there think of the USSR.

That said, yes, people we'd currently code as black existed in Europe, though disproportionately in entrepots in the Mediterranean. If you proceed to e.g. Elizabethan England, most people wouldn't have been confused by the sight of a black person (cf Othello), though they'd likely be something of a curiousity (though still not considered black in the contemporary sense).

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#622

Post by auggierose » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #617

auggierose wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like Succession, but sorry, Dragons is nothing like that. There is no political intrigue, just people in costumes making fairly obvious moves.

They both seem fairly obvious, yet still enjoyable. The one thing a GoT based show has going for it though, is they have historically not been afraid to kill off major characters. That willingness to kill characters keeps the audience a bit on their toes.

Now that you mention it, I have to admit obviousness is not the distinction between Succession and Dragon. I guess the dragon characters just seem dull to me, and I don't really care about what they are up to.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#623

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

momento wrote: post #620

SunlightEdge wrote: post #442

To be maybe controversial... I'm still thinking about it, but I do wonder if diverse casting works in European fantasy stories. The problem I have is that it generally pulls me out of the experience/ makes it less immersive. I welcome diverse castings in modern shows (though we don't need every show to follow a template 'diverse' casting). A common counter argument is, well you can suspend your disbelief and imagine…

As a European, I find it absolutely absurd that peoples immersion is “being broken” by seeing non-white people in a fantasy show. When I see a dwarf in a fantasy TV show, I don’t see the colour of the dwarfs skin - I see a dwarf. The fact that people are uncomfortable by brown dwarves is ridiculous. What a strange hill to die on. I am flabbergasted that this is even a topic of such heated debate at the moment. It wou…

[deleted]

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#624

Post by rendall » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #574

rendall wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno. Ask. Listen. Be humble. Have a hypothesis and then do your best to falsify that. Give him all of the charity he needs to refute your guess that he's a bigot. "So you say that there is a convention in Italian literature of depicting other-worldly beings as having freakishly white skin. Would you be ok with the Pinocchio reboot if the same African-descended actress portrayed the fairy, but were instead made up w…

> Give him all of the charity he needs to refute your guess that he's a bigot. > So, no, I don't think "focusing on race" is an automatic signifier of racism. It sounds like you're saying "if he acts like a bigot, but he says he's not a bigot, then give him the benefit of the doubt."

I'm not sure how what I wrote sounds like that, because if I wanted to write that, I would have. It's a lot simpler, for one.

It's a difficult concept, rhetorical charity, especially in today's climate of flinging the most reprehensible accusation in our repertoire at the slightest provocation.

As I said before, a lot of the excesses of "wokeness" is projected overcompensation for private shame about bigoted feelings.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#625

Post by atvcatole » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #575

satyrnein wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this theoretical, or are you saying this actually happened? I haven't seen this latest show, but for example I had no problems with nonwhite characters in The Witcher. What is a European fantasy show anyway, it's not like they take place in literal Europe? Somehow nobody complains about loss of immersion when characters are changed to white, which happens 100x more often.

Can you name 10? I'm actually asking in good faith because I can't recall any "to white" race swapping in the past few years. All the ones I can think of were Ann Boleyn, the little mermaid, the coming beauty and the beast, the recent terrible resident evil, etc.

I think it's more common when books are adapted to TV/movies, so it's not as obvious as when they change historical characters or characters from other or older visual media. Often they change the location to North America/Europe and change the characters "organically" as well.

Anyway, here's the ones I can think of right away:

Ancient One in the Marvel movies to Tilda Swinton, although the comic character is kind of a racist stereotype, and would have issues in China, so they had good arguments for doing that change.

Staying in the comic universe, Bane and Ra's al Ghul in Batman movies.

Related to the first one; Benedict Cumberbatch plays Khan in the new Star Trek.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#626

Post by School-Cotton » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #575

satyrnein wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this theoretical, or are you saying this actually happened? I haven't seen this latest show, but for example I had no problems with nonwhite characters in The Witcher. What is a European fantasy show anyway, it's not like they take place in literal Europe? Somehow nobody complains about loss of immersion when characters are changed to white, which happens 100x more often.

Can you name 10? I'm actually asking in good faith because I can't recall any "to white" race swapping in the past few years. All the ones I can think of were Ann Boleyn, the little mermaid, the coming beauty and the beast, the recent terrible resident evil, etc.

The Ghost in the Shell reboot with Scarlett Johansson

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#627

Post by elorant » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #493

elorant wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I take from what he said is that the shelf life of movies has shortened. You either make it in the first couple of weeks, or you’re bust. While with the dvds the movie stayed relevant for much longer which could result in a reduced budget for marketing.

The reduced shelf life part of it - you need to make money from the theatrical release, not after - certainly seems to be what he is saying, but it's not clear why that is the case. If the studio makes more money from ticket sale revenue sharing, than from streaming (or previously DVD rental), then why are they now rushing to streaming so quickly? To speculate: Blockbuster used to be utterly dominant in the VHS/DVD r…

With streaming you need no marketing because network effects do it for you. You take advantage of the power of the platform. You only pay to market the really big ones, everything else gets the same kind of promotion which already is too strong because you have an established user base in the millions. Before streaming you had no user base, it was open season for everyone.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#628

Post by mcphage » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #588

mcphage wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only part of the depiction he’s complaining about is race, though.

> The only part of the depiction he’s complaining about is race Am I? Are you sure? Can you quote me on that please? The blue fairy is an important part of my culture, at least for me. If someones rewrites it using all the power of a conglomerate like Disney, that puts at risk our shared culture and heritage. For me she's gonna be a woman with blue air, for someone younger it will be a bald black woman, that has no d…

> For me she's gonna be a woman with blue air, for someone younger it will be a bald black woman

Weird that you spend more time complaining about her skin color than her hair.

> Try doing that with Sherlock Holmes and see what happens.

Shit yeah, sign me up.

> What would happen if a Chinese company made a movie where Martin Luther King is an Albanian immigrant who came to Italy with the Vlora ship in 1991 to become a supporter of immigrants rights and got killed by a mobster in a fight over a pool game?

They might well do that. But it’s different when it’s a real person than an imaginary fairy. And also when you change his appearance versus when you change what he stands for.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#629

Post by dylan604 » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #581

dylan604 wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the concept of creative license.

There's a distinction between creative -license and -arrogance.

there is always an inherent bit of arrogance anytime someone reworks the works of the original creator, so i'm still not sure what you're distinction is. just by attempting to update/modify the story signals you think your version is better. arrogance.

Re: IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of Power

#630

Post by mFixman » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:22 PM UTC

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #15

All crowd-sourced online aggregation is bogus. Every single form of it has someone placing their finger on the scale one way or the other. If it isn't a familial corporation it's for-hire bot farms, perhaps even hired by your competition. Or maybe it's the aggregator themselves, running a digital protection racket. Instead, go read a full review written by a trusted curator.

Everything on the Internet is fake. For all I know, all user reviews are negative because they are mad at diversity and all professional reviewers are positive because are paid for by Amazon.

Reading reviews just biases taste anyway. My plan is to watch the series, recommend it to my friends if I like it, and continue ignoring everything written on the Internet.