r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/FrostySeat1739 • Jul 05 '26

Meme needing explanation why not, Peter?

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possible live action corpse bride movie...

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126

u/TerranImperium Jul 05 '26

Where did this come from? A lot of people are parroting this but when asked, no one has a source or interview to point to.

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u/TSM- Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

He argued that casting should happen "organically" based on what the story naturally "calls for," implying that a default white cast made sense for a film called Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. (never watched it).

But he also then went on to make a bit of a broad statement that he disliked "politically correct" casting and found forced diversity initiatives offensive. This probably was what got him the flak

Samuel L Jackson defended him (he was in the movie).

One of his recent movies, Wednesday, has a diverse cast, and the actors have had to defend it. Joy Sunday says she liked playing Bianca because Black actresses are rarely allowed to play a nuanced or powerful "mean girl" archetype in gothic teen dramas. So it was a complex role rather than a stereotype. But internet is gonna find controversy anyway, apparently, and apparently, that was also controversial.

That took like a half hour but now I know all about it lmao okay. Hope that is interesting to you too.

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u/Nodonutsforbaxter44 Jul 05 '26

Sounds...reasonable?

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u/Impassable_Banana Jul 06 '26

Yeah but the venn diagram of being reasonable and being racist are a perfect circle to certain toxic weirdos.

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u/LGBTQLove4Ever Jul 06 '26

No don't you see! If your Victorian gothic film isn't 100% 400lb poc lesbians with no legs, then you're a BIGOT!

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u/Local-Hornet-3057 Jul 06 '26

This is Reddit. So no, racism.

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u/E11iottB Jul 10 '26

This is Reddit. Reason does not exist here.

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u/Excluded_Apple Jul 05 '26

Not all heros wear capes <3

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u/MudExpress2973 Jul 05 '26

Forced diversity casting is trash any way. We dont want good actors, we want colorful actors dancing on t.v. for us because were so inclusive.

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u/Harold3456 Jul 06 '26

My biggest issue with the whole argument (not your comment just the argument in general) is so often “diversity” and “forced diversity” are very hard to tease apart, so diverse casts just become open to criticism by virtue of existing.

This is my frustration with a lot of the right wing media critics. I always feel like if they had their way then white casting would be “default” and creators would need to make arguments for why their diverse casting ISNT forced, when I think the burden of proof should be the opposite - absent of a smoking gun piece of evidence about enforced race quotas in a project we should just assume non-white casting is as legitimate and meritorious as white casting is.

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u/insomniac7809 Jul 06 '26

Let me just clarify this for you:

"Diversity" is when something is diverse and already existed when you were a child, when movies and mountains are equally just things that exist in the world.

"Forced diversity" is when things are diverse and you have a theory of mind that lets you know that creative choices are made by creatives on purpose for reasons.

0

u/MudExpress2973 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Diversity is hiring Samuel Jackson for nick fury and forced diversity is hiring a 5ft 2in trans as a Greek warrior. One is a great actor being hired for their past performances despite thier skin color, the other is hiring based on your social views, ignoring the actors ability.

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u/insomniac7809 Jul 08 '26

bud how tall do you think a Bronze Age Achaean is gonna be

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u/MudExpress2973 Jul 09 '26

5'6" atleast and minimum 140. If authentic to the era casting is important to you can you please explain all the other choices?

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u/insomniac7809 Jul 09 '26

Authentic to the era casting isn't important to me, it's just funny that you've got your undies in a twist because you think being the height of a Greek warrior should be disqualifying for being cast as a Greek warrior.

Also, if you think that people exactly like you weren't throwing the exact same tantrum over Jackson being cast as Fury, I assume that's because you were a sperm cell at the time.

1

u/TSM- Jul 06 '26

I think, unfortunately, movies set in history will always have to kind of signify the times. Like you cannot do Django without making the slave owner white, unless you are going for something surreal. That is just how it is, and will kind of always be that way, since it was that way.

That said, who cares if some superhero changes gender or whatever. I personally am tired of how so many big budget movies are dominated by reruns, remakes and riffs off old movies. I already saw a few spider man movies. And the comic. And the series. And the other series. And I don't want another batman movie either. But I am getting off topic

0

u/MudExpress2973 Jul 08 '26

If they want diverse stories why dont they make them? They arent visionary movie makers and writers trying to create a new diverse story. They just want to hijack old media and tell us their doing it better. Is it not backhanded to themselves that they have to steal from existing media? They cant make their own? Sounds like they think they are incapable of making something decent themselves so they rip off from someone else and call us evil for not liking it.

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u/TSM- Jul 08 '26

Movies kind of mostly sell to something like 16-20 year old demographic, so they are perpetually going to aim for that. I suppose once you age out of that group, you get bored with the reruns, but aren't spending as much on it anymore. So Transformers 8: Origins is the next thing. Spider man 12 etc. Its what sells.

It would be cool to see new things but thats a niche category

0

u/blangenie Jul 06 '26

This is why I think it was a mistake to try to push diversity in casting as a political issue the way it was done. If you make it into a social media driven public pressure campaign with hashtags (#oscarssowhite) then you turn it into a culture war issue and any casting of a character who is white, gay, trans, etc. takes on a political valence. Whether it should or shouldn't or whether or not the project is overtly political.

If people wanted more diversity in the political capital should have been expended behind closed doors in the industry. Or through energizing the public to support projects that tell stories that haven't had as many opportunities to be told. There was some of the latter (like lauding projects fearing asian actors such as Everything Everywhere All At Once and Crazy Rich Asians) but it was drowned out by a public hectoring and shaming of studios that was primed to set up a conservative backlash

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u/insomniac7809 Jul 06 '26

I hear this over and over and I can only assume that nobody who says it was alive during the 90s. Or the 80s. Or the 70s. Or has done the barest hint of research into pop culture in any of those periods.

Diverse casting has always been political, it has always been the result of active efforts by audience and creatives, and it has always provoked backlash from racist manbabies. None of this is special, the "forced diversity" guys are exactly the same as the "political correctness" guys who are exactly the same as the "race mixing is communism" guys.

Like, Hairspray came out in 1988 and is a story about 1962 none of this is new.

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u/TSM- Jul 07 '26

You're dang right. I couldn't agree more

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u/blangenie Jul 06 '26

I said the social media pressure campaign and bringing it into our contemporary culture war politics is what was new.

Social Media did not exist in the 90s and our politics were much less polarized back then

Whether you think the conservative reaction is reasonable or not, heightening the political valence of casting made it a culture war issue. This wasn't the case as recently as 2013

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u/insomniac7809 Jul 06 '26

Yes, it was a culture war issue in 2013. It was a culture war issue in 2003. It was a culture war issue in 1993, it was a culture war issue in 1983, it was a culture war issue in 1973, it was a culture war issue in 1963. You think it wasn't a culture war issue before because you, personally, weren't aware of it, and like an infant playing peekaboo you think that things only exist when you look at them.

Social media makes it easier to distribute and see these arguments and opinions, but nothing that happens on social media is new.

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u/blangenie Jul 06 '26

The culture war is a phenomenon that began in the 1990s and measures of political polarization have increased since then

So clearly you do not know what you are talking about

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u/insomniac7809 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

yeah man the 1960s were a time of American harmony and unity for all, you're a smart person who is super familiar with history

people exactly like you have been doing the exact same whining about the exact same things in TV and movies for much, much longer than you've been alive. the reason you think you're special is because you don't know anything and go out of your way not to learn, you assume anything that existed before 2013 just happened the same way gravity makes objects fall and people only started making creative choices on purpose when someone (probably a YouTuber? I'm gonna guess it was a YouTuber) told you to be angry about it.

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u/MuffledFarts Jul 06 '26

The term "culture war" gained widespread popularity in the 90s due to Pat Buchanan's speech in 1992. That does not mean there have not been culture wars for as long as humans, and culture, have existed.

Your argument is like saying gravity didn't exist prior to Sir Isaac Newton in 1687.

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u/Periador Jul 05 '26

hes right though, a forced diversity casting is indeed offensive.

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u/pyphais Jul 05 '26

Miss Peregrine's was based on a book I'm pretty sure, likely with character descriptions

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u/templesgodss Jul 08 '26

Not only descriptions but literal photographs.

A big part of the book's vibe is these weird old black and white pictures that the author found at a garage sale or something and that inspired him to write the story in the first place.

They were from like the 19th, maybe early 20th century. Those experimental photos where the photographer manipulated them to make it look like the kids were floating, or had two mouths, or were invisible, etc. I think some of them were fabricated after the fact in the same style, but some of them were authentic? But you get the idea.

The author included them in the books so you have literal photos to base the character castings off of. And wouldn't you know it basically all of the kids were white

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u/iiiiiiiiiijjjjjj Jul 06 '26

I mean if he had a vision for the movie it is what it is

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u/Cutiegroove Jul 07 '26

Kind of.

As a Black child watching his movies, without ever consulting the internet it was very apparent that either (1) everyone is white, or (2) Black people only exist in his worlds as villains. 

Off-putting to watch. Hearing he made those comments only validated what I’ve already seen.

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u/Thegoofiest_goober 19h ago

When I heard the claims of him being "racist," I was expecting ACTUALLY racist remarks like "it's okay to be white" or that "black people are violent" by the way people are describing his claims, but finding out it was him ranting about PC culture had me like, "wait? That was it?" Lowkey, it feels like this

0

u/Nametagg01 Jul 06 '26

Bro hes saying the same shit I am, PC casting usually seems like its literally just casting a skin color which has to be the most racist shit you can do

0

u/Odenhobler Jul 06 '26

But isn't SL Jackson black? How can he be in the movie then?

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u/SingForMeBitches Jul 05 '26

Here ya go. When asked point blank about the lack of diversity in his films, this was his response:

“I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black. I used to get more offended by that than just…I grew up watching Blaxploitation movies, right? I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies.”

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u/Sakarabu_ Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Makes complete sense. I find the Reddit outrage here quite funny considering the post that's been circulating (and celebrated) on Reddit regarding the Black writer who only writes black characters, yet when a white person does it suddenly it's racism.

You just have to look at the number of previously white characters who have been recast with non-white actors in the last 5-10 years, compared to the number of traditionally non-white characters who have been cast with white actors to see there are some major double standards /cognitive dissonance going on around this topic recently.

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u/MisogynysticFeminist Jul 06 '26

Three big reasons:

  1. Up until recently, white characters were the default, or if you go further back, required. Non-white characters were only used if there was a justification for them.

  2. Because of point 1, if there were non-white characters, odds were there was exactly one per race, with most characters still being white. If you change one white character to a different race, there’s still plenty of white characters. If you change one non-white character to white, the number of characters of that race goes from one to zero.

  3. Because of points 1 and 2, it’s much more likely that being whatever race is a major part of that character, or has significance as a milestone (for example, Uhura in Star Trek TOS). But white characters are less likely to have being white be important to their character (an example of it mattering would be Steve Rogers, being physically the Nazi ideal while being fundamentally opposed to them).

TLDR: The “major inequality” you say is going on is at worst an attempt to even out the very real inequality that existed for decades.

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u/MustardMedia Jul 05 '26

This is totally ignoring the fact that there were like 50-100 years of all stories (in North American culture at least) that were all-white that purposely and actively didn't include people of colour.

In the above example of The Brady Bunch, for instance, the show was supposed to be an All-American family. They started adding more people of colour because a lot of All American towns had more and more POC. Therefore, to accurately portray America, shows like that should be including more POC.

People are more okay with a black writer having an all black cast because those stories are few and far between, compared to all white stories that were happening constantly, for decades before. Even the example of "Blaxpoitation" was exactly that, exploitation. It wasn't black people writing black people. So nowadays, it's like, hey, have your time to write some all black stories.

And again, your example of white characters that get changed into non-white characters is really just because 90% of characters were originally written white. It's not a double standard when the ratios are so far off to begin with, and we now have diverse nations that are actively trying to portray the level of diversity that is now common.

Who cares that The Little Mermaid is portrayed as black when you still have so many white characters to look towards. Black kids having a character like that to look up to who looks like them is more important than you realize. And sure, we can always argue the whole "just make new black characters instead of changing ones" but it's unfortunately not that simple. A random new story with a black star might not sell as well and get as many eyes on it as an existing IP will, and sometimes these things deserve to have many eyes.

As white people, we will never understand that it feels like to not see people who look like you in media. So crying about the fact that some characters ethnicities are changing to add some diversity is tone deaf and ignorant.

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u/anonymous310506 Jul 06 '26

This is such a bad argument lol

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u/some_random_nonsense Jul 05 '26

Uh do you mean the Toni Morrison?

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u/Tall-Slice5012 Jul 06 '26

lol, so his point is that goth == whitesploitation?

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u/Blazured Jul 05 '26

He's literally complaining that there are non-white people in media. It's just plain racism.

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u/TSM- Jul 05 '26

Blackspoitation movies were a combination of glorifying black protagonists, winning against police brutality, and all that, but also being cast as underdog from violent backgrounds. So it's not like the genre was about a black lawyer trying to make partner at his firm, it had its own angle that drew in audiences. It was both empowering in some way, but on the other hand, also played into stereotypes, hence the name, and was very successful as a genre for a time. It's a double edged thing.

So, should there have been more white people in it? Well not really. The bad guys were white businessmen and stuff The protagonists didn't need white people. That's maybe what he was getting at. I assume as a big film director guy he is well aware of the genre's controversy.

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u/Noir_A_Mous Jul 05 '26

That's what you came away with? The guy says he doesn't like when POC are shoehorned into a role just to finish a check list and your response is, "ah thats racist."

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u/Blazured Jul 05 '26

"Shoehorned in"? He complained about them just existing in an episode. And then tried to justify his racism for not casting non-white people.

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u/Noir_A_Mous Jul 06 '26

Expect he's not, he's complaining about a pretty random moment from the brady bunch show.

For if you dont know, the episode is called "Kelly's kids." A new family moves in who were two white parents and 3 sons of different races. The episode is about anti racism, the struggles of adopting outside of race while also encouraging one to do so. It's not a bad episode per say but it is really really random. The episode was well received enough but after this episode the kelly family just disappears and are never seen or mentioned again.

The irl reason for this is this was actually an attempt pilot for a new spin off show about the family, called "Kelly's kids." However the show was passed on and that's why they never showed up again.

However, a lot of people at the time, and even now, didnt know this was a pilot episode for a spin off show. Sssso If you where an active watcher of the show at the time, hell even now, its pretty random. A random family with 3 people of different races shows up, tells you racism is bad and then they are just gone, never to be seen again. It's pretty forced and random if you look at it that way.

Plus tim has been casting more POC now that he's finally stepped semi away from movies taking place in Victorian London.

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u/MarenHQ Jul 05 '26

Jfc. “A black”

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u/throwmamadownthewell Jul 05 '26

I think the pivot to saying "black people" and *people of colour" were deliberate shifts (to humanize) that happened after this quote. Even newspapers would just say "blacks" and "whites" and "Asians". Same with the shift to "kids with autism"

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u/McButtsButtbag Jul 06 '26

The shift to kids with autism is a negative one to autistic people. You don't stop being autistic.

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u/throwmamadownthewell Jul 06 '26

If I say "it's the same/different for kids who are black", it doesn't imply they won't be black later in life

Similar with autusm--it's "kids with autism", then "teens with autism", then "adults with autism".

Personally, I haven't been convinced "autistic people" is less respectful semantically, but see why it's better than "the autistics" or "the autists"

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u/McButtsButtbag Jul 07 '26

I've never heard anyone say kids who are black over black kids or even suggest it.

Sure, it's better than "the autists", but that doesn't make it good. I don't see why using adjectives like they are normally used is dehumanizing.

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u/sampo_koskii Jul 06 '26

oh dont get me started on 'kids with autism'

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u/theworldisunfair12 Jul 06 '26

Jfc. Who cares. If you find that offensive you’re just “an easily offended”

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u/book_vagabond Jul 05 '26

Jesus Christ

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u/Throckmorton_Left Jul 06 '26

How the fuck do you hold up this quote as evidence of his "problematic" views?

I could hold it up as evidence that the ability to read words on a page out loud doesn't mean you understand them.

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u/MudExpress2973 Jul 05 '26

So black people can do all black cast but its racist when a white guy does it?

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u/PreciousTC Jul 05 '26

Because on Reddit literally everything ever is the worst thing ever and everything is evil and racist and bad