The Four Color Media Monitor

You don't need a reason for why someone would go "social justice" these days.
1. Anyone who exposes themselves as opposing the SJ narrative are cashiered from the
business immediately. In Hollywood, everyone has to at least pretend to be on board with the SJ narrative.

2. There are a very few exceptions, which prove the rule. Legacy actors/writers/directors who have made huge profits in the past can get away with simply paying lip service to the "cause".

The age of liberalism is dead, the age of fascist totalitarianism is in bloom.

"1. Anyone who exposes themselves as opposing the SJ narrative are cashiered from the
business immediately. In Hollywood, everyone has to at least pretend to be on board with the SJ narrative."

Kevin Sorbo, Kelsey Grammar, and Clint Eastwood oppose the SJ narrative quite a bit. Heck, Sorbo even has a web series outright lampooning how insane and idiotic the SJ agenda is. They don't even pay lipservice.

"The age of liberalism is dead, the age of fascist totalitarianism is in bloom."

Actually, the age of liberalism and the age of fascist totalitarianism are one and the same. Or have you forgotten that liberalism is what formed the French Revolution and Reign of Terror, as Abbe Barulle noted, and Timothy Dwight. In fact, Barruell's book: https://archive.org/details/BarruelMemoirsIllustratingTheHistoryOfJacobinism For goodness sakes, Karl Marx's old man frequently read him Voltaire, one of the biggest liberal thinkers out there.

It is useful to keep some perspective. He is talking about how to include some women and minority characters in his tv shows, not how to elect Hitler. Don't forget, Hollywood has been doing this kind of thing since it started, except more in reverse. The gay identity of book characters was erased as they moved to the screen (Cabaret, The Maltese Falcon). Bruce Lee's Kung Fu proposal for a Chinese wanderer became a half-white character played by a white actor, David Carradine. And of course we have had blond blue eyed Jesus's, like Ted Neeley.

"It is useful to keep some perspective. He is talking about how to include some women and minority characters in his tv shows, not how to elect Hitler."

Nope, he's talking about doing it at the expense of existing characters. If he wanted to be creative, he'd feature already existing women minority characters from the comics in his shows rather than change the race, gender, and/or sexuality of already existing characters. That's not creative.

"Don't forget, Hollywood has been doing this kind of thing since it started, except more in reverse. The gay identity of book characters was erased as they moved to the screen (Cabaret, The Maltese Falcon)."

There are no gay characters in "The Maltese Falcon."


"Bruce Lee's Kung Fu proposal for a Chinese wanderer became a half-white character played by a white actor, David Carradine."

That is just a rumor, nothing more. It's never been proven that Lee was involved in the development of "Kung Fu."

"And of course we have had blond blue eyed Jesus's, like Ted Neeley."

So what? Every culture depicts Jesus as looking like them. It's nothing new, and not something worth getting worked up about. Unless you're like Shaun King, and think it's a tool of "white supremacy."

There were no gay characters in the The Maltese Falcon movie; Wilmer Cook and Joe Cairo were gay in the book. Punk has been an all purpose insult for a while now, but at the time it was written, when Wilmer was called a punk, it meant he was the young kid playing the feminine role in a gay relationship, and the characters were described in a way that fit the stereotypes.

The story about Kung Fu is more than rumor; the similarity in the treatments is overwhelming - Kung Fu wanderer leaving the monastary to wander America in search of a lost relative. Lee was indignant, and of course the network denied it.

But we agree that the race and gender swapping is nothing new and not something worth getting worked up about. It doesn't really affect the excitement or the value of the character one way or the other, so long as those qualities were not important to the identity of the character to begin with.

"There were no gay characters in the The Maltese Falcon movie; Wilmer Cook and Joe Cairo were gay in the book. Punk has been an all purpose insult for a while now, but at the time it was written, when Wilmer was called a punk, it meant he was the young kid playing the feminine role in a gay relationship, and the characters were described in a way that fit the stereotypes."

Never read the book. I'm going by the movie.


"The story about Kung Fu is more than rumor; the similarity in the treatments is overwhelming - Kung Fu wanderer leaving the monastary to wander America in search of a lost relative. Lee was indignant, and of course the network denied it."

Not necessarily. Plenty of stories are similar to each other. It doesn't mean plagiarism's involved.


"But we agree that the race and gender swapping is nothing new and not something worth getting worked up about. It doesn't really affect the excitement or the value of the character one way or the other, so long as those qualities were not important to the identity of the character to begin with."

I was referring to it in the context of how Jesus was depicted. As for comic characters, if you grew up expecting a character to look a specific way, then it's reasonable to be put off if they're changed in a movie. I don't want to see a black Superman, because the character's not black in the comics.

Also, people were mad about the MCU version of Mary Jane for a reason: she lacks the original's trademark red hair and she comes off as an unlikeable feminist type.

"There were no gay characters in the The Maltese Falcon movie; Wilmer Cook and Joe Cairo were gay in the book. Punk has been an all purpose insult for a while now, but at the time it was written, when Wilmer was called a punk, it meant he was the young kid playing the feminine role in a gay relationship, and the characters were described in a way that fit the stereotypes."

Okay, I know Cairo was gay thanks to Wikipedia making that explicit (I think their exact words on Cairo were, and I quote, "an effeminate Levantine homosexual"), but I don't think Cook was that even in the original book (if he were, I'm pretty sure Wilmer would have been explicitly listed as such on the book's article as well). And last I checked, Greasers were also called punks, and they aren't feminine (besides, their description of Cook indicated he was a violent young gunman, which if anything indicates he's NOT feminine).

And for the record, the whole reason Cairo's sexuality was not mentioned was due to the Hayes Code mandating that they remove it.

And quite frankly, as far as the overall article, I'm not fond of race-swapping/gender-swapping/sexuality-swapping characters, especially not if it's to push an agenda like they clearly were discussing above. I'm willing to tolerate it only if they're written exceptionally well enough or the person's a good enough actor to overlook it, but I am NOT fond of the practice, and most of us aren't fond of it at all, as AgentofSHIELD pointed out.

Aside from that, ignoring all the digs on how caucasians and heterosexuality are supposedly "outdated" (and that's despite God himself making clear that's the only orientation that's worth existing due to calling homosexuality an abomination, not to mention blowing up two communities because of it), I honestly don't get why he feels like he has to cuss out the 1940s and 1950s, demean those eras. Last I checked, the 40s and 50s were probably one of the few genuinely good times even WITH the Cold War going on, since at least things were actually stable.

Of course, wouldn't at all be surprised that Berlanti would be running his mouth demeaning white heterosexuality like that, or for that matter supporting BLM. Ignoring the utter crap he's done to Arrowverse, his show The Red Line was pretty much a BLM propaganda series, right down to having a white cop gun down a black man as well as BLM being treated positively, and did I mention said black man was a "married" homosexual (not to mention obviously adheres to transectionality)? Probably the only positive point the series might have had is that they surprisingly enough actually TRIED to humanize the cop rather than make him fully into the worst person in the world (on a side note, thanks to what happened to that cop, played by Noel Fisher, seeing the climax of Max Keeble's Big Move where Troy McGinty gets similar treatment is going to leave me somewhat disturbed, even though I know McGinty, unlike that cop, fully deserved what came to him). Here's some details:

*https://newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/lindsay-kornick/2019/04/28/new-cbs-show-red-line-claims-people-shot-police-living

*https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/lindsay-kornick/2019/05/12/cbs-social-justice-mini-series-pits-peaceful-blm-movement

*https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/lindsay-kornick/2019/05/20/cbs-mini-series-promotes-religious-intolerance-name-gay

Hard to see the 1940s and 1950s as good stable times; one quarter of that period was in the middle of a world war, with the possibility of a world run by Adolf Hitler looming large at the beginning. For three quarters of that time we were in the midst of a polio pandemic. The country still had segregation for most of those decades, racial prejudice was strong, and desegregation in the 1950s prompted a militant backlash and a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.

I don't think Berlanti is dissing the 40s and 50s, just recognizing that what was normal then may not be normal now. There were no black adventure heros or superheros then outside of the black newspapers, and that provided a distorted picture of America. Now it would seem unreal to have an all-white cast in the kinds of dramas he produces; and since his mandate is to present already-copyrighted superheros rather than make up new ones, he has to adapt. He has included characters who were conceived as black to begin with, like Vixen.

"Feminine role" might have been the wrong choice of words; a punk was a slang term for a catamite, the young receptive partner in a gay relationship. The meaning has changed over the years since Hammett wrote the book. Greasers may have been called punks, but that was decades later.

I don't know if the Hayes code is the only reason they changed the two characters sexuality; but the point is, Hollywood has always been doing swappings of one kind or another, and it is nothing new. The original work is raw material for them, not a bible. Bruce Lee was under discussion to be the actor on the Kung Fu show, but he was nixed for being too short and too Chinese, among other reasons.

There has also been a lot of more subtle racial changes in various shows and movies, accomplished through casting, but I do not necessarily think that an actor has to be limited to playing their own ethnicity, so I do not have any real problem with that, except when it is glaringly obvious as being wrong.

I don't understand how AOS can have no problem with each culture depicting Jesus as looking like one of their own, but has problems with a culture doing that with a comic book character! Which one deserves more respect?

"I don't understand how AOS can have no problem with each culture depicting Jesus as looking like one of their own, but has problems with a culture doing that with a comic book character! Which one deserves more respect?"

Because no one is 100% sure what Jesus looked like, although we can guess what He looked like seeing as he lived in the Middle East.

As for comic book characters, comics are a visual medium, and readers have a built-in idea of what the characters should look like. Mary Jane is a redhead, for instance, and so is Iris West. Peter Parker is a brown-haired kid from Queens. And so on. Hollywood and comic creators shouldn't act surprised when fans get mad when their favorite characters are changed.

Your statement implies that I'm a bad Christian, which I'm not.

Well that depends on what Christianity means in your section of the world in comparison to the rest of it. I do seem to recall you implying you're stuck in a cult of some sort...

"Well that depends on what Christianity means in your section of the world in comparison to the rest of it. I do seem to recall you implying you're stuck in a cult of some sort..."

Never said anything of the sort. You're just making stuff up now. You're good at that.

The movies are doing better and better jobs of being true to the comic book source material. The Marvel movies now are closer to the comic books than, say, the 1940s Captain America serial, or the Bill Bixby Hulk, or the Monica Belluci Modesty Blaise. When movies adapt novels, they tamper with the source material mightily, so it is not surprising that they try to do the same thing with the comics. One American film adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo completely changed the ending, for example; the I, Robot movie had nothing in common with the Asimov book other than the title. In the book, Dorothy's travel to Oz was no dream.

I don't really care about hair color; you pick the best actor for the part and don't worry about the incidental details. Even in the comic books, the look of each character, and by implication their ethnicity, changes with every new artist. Peter Parker looked Slavic when Ditko drew him and Italian when Romita took over, to pick an early example. The shape of Namor's head changes dramatically from the original triangle-headed guy who looked a bit like Fred Astaire, to the various incarnations that have come since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFKmzxNhbKU

https://www.deviantart.com/devilkais/art/Tales-Of-The-Sorcerer-Supreme-896460607

"The movies are doing better and better jobs of being true to the comic book source material. The Marvel movies now are closer to the comic books than, say, the 1940s Captain America serial, or the Bill Bixby Hulk, or the Monica Belluci Modesty Blaise. When movies adapt novels, they tamper with the source material mightily, so it is not surprising that they try to do the same thing with the comics. One American film adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo completely changed the ending, for example; the I, Robot movie had nothing in common with the Asimov book other than the title. In the book, Dorothy's travel to Oz was no dream."

"I don't really care about hair color; you pick the best actor for the part and don't worry about the incidental details. Even in the comic books, the look of each character, and by implication their ethnicity, changes with every new artist. Peter Parker looked Slavic when Ditko drew him and Italian when Romita took over, to pick an early example. The shape of Namor's head changes dramatically from the original triangle-headed guy who looked a bit like Fred Astaire, to the various incarnations that have come since."

Yawn. Way to miss the point, Anonymous.