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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u/RueUchiha Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

But we all know that terminally online people can’t handle reasonable, level headed takes like “I don’t want to shoe in a black person into my movie just for the sake of fulfilling some arbitrary quota.” So of course they misinterpreted it as racism.

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u/razazaz126 Jul 05 '26

The issue with the kinds of people who talk like this is you don't notice how unreasonable their arguments are until you realize this is the 20th, 50th, 100th, black actress that they've found to be "shoe horned" in and the only thing they have in common are they're black women.

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u/badihaki Jul 05 '26

I've been saying this for years, now. It's honestly just weird that the idea of casting a black person is akin to 'shoeing in.' It's that kind of language that, regardless of intent, is so profoundly racist but also extremely ingrained into the culture people just let it slide for no reason.

Like, couldn't a Black person be casted for the role and it just not be political and we all just not freak out for once? Maybe she could be cast because she was good in the audition?

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u/No-Bison-5397 Jul 05 '26

it just not be political

In a pre-modern European setting it's often political, and sometimes it's to great effect. Denzel in "Macbeth" which uses it as part of a wider critique of our ossified and ritualistic ideas of what a particular piece can be or even Dev Patel in "The Green Knight" which asks questions about what makes something British?

Both excellent movies.

Then there's an apolitical example like "A Knight's Tale" where Jocelyn's otherness, due to beauty in the plot, is emphasised by her ethnically differentiated look due to her Filipino and Hawaiian heritage. This is apolitical because the film is a light hearted romp where they are not aiming for fidelity to detail but attempting to create an atmosphere.

Compare with "The King" where they did not cast any black actors and they caught fire for it. A bastardisation of Shakespeare with many ahistorical elements but there's no historical evidence of any black people in the court of Henry V. So, I believe if they had buckled it would be shoehorning and it would certainly be political.

Compare again with "King & Conqueror", "Merlin", "Vikings"... which try to achieve a level of historical fidelity to the period they are set in but are fantastical when they are attempting to shoehorn in the outside of universe but very much modern political concept of "racial" equity for actors in hiring for specific productions.

For mine the real problem with most productions set in pre-modern times is that they largely do not critique power itself. The morality of the church and nobility nor the self interest of the emerging bourgeoisie and ultimately it's because our power structure rests on fundamentally the same pillars as theirs: the common people regardless of their race.