Dumb, Yes, But Fashionable
From the world of cinema and pretentious agonising:
The world is big and different people will be interested in different things, but this seems like a really stupid thing to think about for more than two seconds https://t.co/qWAKhVNMKG
— wanye (@wanyeburkett) June 20, 2025
The implications of Mr Boyle’s modish piety, presumably unintended yet implied nonetheless, are explored quite pithily in the replies.
Among which, the implication that white writers and directors should only concern themselves with suitably pale-skinned characters, carefully excluding non-white characters, and non-white actors, lest they appropriate or colonise something or other.
Likewise, the implication that a white person couldn’t possibly comprehend the inner life of a brown person – these magical, put-upon beings – which itself rather implies that white audiences needn’t turn up to films in which non-white people appear prominently. Due to their alleged incomprehensibility.
Strange basis for a global film industry, if you ask me. But there we are.
Update, via the comments:
Previously in the world of pretentious agonising:
Do follow the link for the inevitable twist and colossal hypocrisy.
And from the comments following which, this:
But no, we must all become twitchy and neurotic. That’s bound to go well.
It’s like they don’t hear themselves.
It’s so bizarre. What happened to the idea of our common humanity? They really seem to think that people are fundamentally different depending on their race and that we all need to segregate ourselves. As ever, “anti-racism” is breathtakingly racist.
Isn’t it rather arrogant assumption to think that a white European man couldn’t possibly do as good a job as a native Indian man simply by virtue of his skin colour ? It’s like reverse colonialism
And as noted in the replies, the Indian film industry does not appear to be rendered tearful by appropriation or riffing on products from other cultures.
This came to mind:
But no, we must all become twitchy and neurotic. That’s bound to go well.
cultural appropriation
Some culture is not worth appropriating, much less existing.
[ Post updated. ]
That.
They do tend to apply a double standard under which “brown people” are entitled to appropriate anything that white people create.
Walkabout,60000 years of Aboriginal culture was told in a couple of scenes let alone the whole film.
Heh.
Speaking of twitchy and neurotic, I was reminded of this:
Also considered traumatising for audiences, the onstage popping of balloons, “expressions of Christian faith,” and depictions of bad weather.
In – wait for it – The Tempest.
And yet liberals constantly talk about Nazis. It’s their favorite
accusationslur.I’m still processing the idea that significant numbers of theatre-goers would turn up to see The Sound of Music with no idea, no inkling, that the story features Nazis.
The proponents of multi-culturalism seem oddly obsessed with isolating cultures from each other.
“I’d be looking for a young Indian filmmaker to shoot it.”
As an aficionado of Bollywood, I am not sure the addition of over the top action scenes would have helped “Slumdog Millionaire”.
If only there’d been some clue…
Yes, quite.
Can’t believe you’ve got me here toiling at the weekend.
I would wager they also freak out if the peas touch their mashed potatoes.
These things rarely survive even minimal scrutiny as arguments about reality. They seem instead to exist as poses, affectations, or signs of insufferable neuroticism.
From Heh:
He should apologize for Trainspotting either way. I still want my money back from that one. With interest. Wasn’t there a line in that movie where the characters describe themselves (the Scots) as the “niggers of Europe”? After that I started to notice a trend in European films where characters from whatever country the film was set in were making a similar claim. I believe in The Commitments they said this about the Irish. Then some other film that I have otherwise forgotten it was said regarding the…Portuguese. I believe I have also recently seen it used…ummm…pejoratively in regard to the Ukrainians. Now there’s some interesting appropriation.
As an Indian origin, the comments about appropriation by Indian cinema or the “Indian nation” playing cricket – while understandable, given the sheer idiocy on display, are a bit misdirected.
I don’t know a single “normal” Indian (exclude those working at the BBC or Priyamvada Gopal) who cares. Honestly, make movies, eat chicken tikka, wear Indian clothes. No one cares, just like Indians are happy to devour Blyton or Wodehouse.
This is a Western liberal issue. If you have a bone to pick, get them under control. They are the only ones who get such barmy useless concepts.
FFS, “white” and “brown” skin aren’t even one culture. Just like Polish or French culture differ from British, India has multiple cultures united under one nation.
And the reason why Indians might be upset about Danny Boyle, is not some “appropriation” but because it was unrelentingly bleak and negative about India. Not to pretend that India hasn’t got problems, and Bollywood movies don’t shy away from touching upon such subjects, but film makers like Boyle appear more keen on “poverty porn”, which ironically just gives fuel to those who might be bigoted. Funnily, though, the Western liberal class also often appears much more likely to fall in this category.
To the twisted movie industry with it’s incredible stupidity I say you are losing audience faster than Iran is losing the war with Israel.
Come to think of it, if we’re going to play that game, wasn’t cinema invented by the French and popularised by the Americans? Wouldn’t that make an Indian film director guilty of cultural appropriation, regardless of the subject of the film?
It’s all so selective and unutterably stupid.
[ Sounds of toiling. ]
About 30 years ago, in a team meeting (of a team consisting of a couple Indians, three or four Americans of whatever kind, a Brit, a Hungarian, a Russian, a Pakistani, a couple of Vietnamese guys etc.) after general discussion/griping about yet another damn diversity training class we were being forced to attend degenerated into mocking of well…everything race related, my boss who was of pure Indian Brahman class said as he was the purest Aryan in the room everyone else needs to shut up. He definitely had a point. It was getting rather silly in there.
Need I remind you that American Thomas Edison invented the light bulb behind the whole process so the rest of you people can just f*** off in the dark.
[ Toiling intensifies. ]
An issue invented by the left to use as a weapon to destroy Western civilization.
[ Slides past-sell-date energy bar towards David. ]
To be clear, the toiling is basically reading the comments and putting ice in a drink.
As if they would ever allow White filmmakers to make films by, for and about White people, without “representation.” That would be awesome.
What they really mean is “Shut up and make no films at all. Stand aside for your brown betters.”
Joe Biden patiently explained to us years ago that a black man, Lewis Howard Latimer, invented the light bulb. If Joe said it, it has to be true.
[ Cancels order of 1990’s era MRE’s. ]