Genderbending and Raceswaping In Media

[Makeshift Python]

Funnily, Ian Fleming had regarded James Bond as a bad person who fights for good. This is why in the novels Bond gets tortured so much, as it was Fleming essentially "punishing" Bond.

[Madner Kami]

3: Maybe, or they could keep it that way and not change anything else because a lot of people assume Harry deserves to be hurt by Dudley and Draco so not changing the gender of the two could be justified.

Wait... What?

Yeah... that got me too. In this scenario we are talking about an eleven-year-old girl. I genuinely mean no offence to Winter, but he seems like someone who doesn't really understand that you can get away with a level of violence towards men and boys in media that you simply cannot with women and girls. And that goes double when we are talking about a boy beating up a girl.

I can't remember or re-read anything in my post relating to what you just wrote. My confusion has nothing to do with gender and how society treats them in media, but how people can see the way Potter was treated by Draco or the Dursleys as something he deserves.

Some fans think that the Dursley's are good people and Harry is ungreatful to them and that the bullying from Dudley and later Draco and the emotional abuse from his aunt and uncle is well deserved because he doesn't appreciate their hospitality.

Those people are insane. They are the real-life equivalent of Barney Stinson arguing that Johnny Lawrence was the good guy in The Karate Kid.

A few years ago there was a video made about Adam Torres from RWBY, this video went on about how Adam was a real hero, painted his gaslighting of Blake as romantic, that Blake was being childish and how Adam deserved to be seen as a hero. And let's you think that this was made as a joke, in his reaction video to Adam's death he got REALLY pissed off and later accursed Blake and Yang as remorseless murders and other stupid things. He has over 1000 followers and his video is loaded with people backing him up.

I've had to help people either out of abusive relationships or have tried to help former abusers turn their lives around so I'm speaking from experience here on the subject of abuse and those who support it. There are people who think Harry deserves to be abused and the gender of the victim doesn't matter. It's wrong and changing Harry's gender while leaving her treatment at the hands of the Dursley's unchanged in a hypothetical TV series wouldn't change that anything.

The gender and race of Harry Potter means nothing in this regards, abuse is abuse and Harry IS an abuse victim and the abuse is mostly verbal from his aunt and uncle and physical from his cousin and between the two Harry receives more of the former instead of the latter.

It's kind of besides the point, but: Frankly, I think you should spend more time outside the circles you are currently associating with. "The Internet" has this wierd way of amplifying the most vocal minorities and I feel this does you no good.

[Draco Dracul]

The increased prevalence is the result of Hollywood's desire for properties with existing name recognition running up against the increasing demand by audiences for diverse casts.

Correction: the perceived demand by audiences for diverse casts.

The reason companies keep doing it despite the backlash from people online is that films with diverse casts consistently make more money than films with all white casts.

[Edvarius]

It should be noted that gender and race bending can be used as tools for specific purposes without just trying to be "woke". If you change those aspects you at the same time change several base assumptions bring towards that character, even if nothing else is changed, and this may be something an adapter specifically wants to happen. Or other times changing one of these aspects, such as gender, can change how they would relate to other characters, whether it be due to power dynamics or character relationships. Just as a hypothetical example, let's change Lancelot to a woman, but keep in their relationship with Guenevere. Creating what is then a lesbian relationship with the queen then brings up questions about Arthur's and Guenevere's relationship, potential exploration of same-sex relationships in the past, and attitudes towards gender roles during those times.

Now let's try changing something else: instead of making Lancelot a woman, let's instead make Galahad non-Christian, like say a Jew or a Muslim (more of a stretch, but depending on when you place the story he could be said to have come from Spain?), yet still have him be the one who is pure of heart enough to find the Grail, a Christian artifact. This potentially opens up all kinds questions regarding religion, faith, and what it means to be righteous. And these are, again, all different things an adapter might want to explore hence why the change is made in the first place.

Now admittedly this is using an old story as an example. So how does it relate to more modern stories being adapted? Well, as was mentioned in the first post, with Forrest Gump a man was changed to being Black as one of several things done to remove the racism present in the original book that the adaptation didn't want to deal with. By making Heimdall Black in the Marvel movie it creates an impression that the Aesir are not a homogeneous society, but that even among beings worshiped as gods there is variety.

Heck, sometimes you can do it just for the laughs. I read lines from Miranda in "The Tempest" for a college class years back in my deepest and manliest of voices. It was ones where she's describing herself as a maiden, too. (And no, that wasn't just me being silly when called on randomly, I volunteered for that. Because when you have the opportunity for doing a bad Brian Blessed impersonation while describing yourself as a maiden in Shakespeare, you darn well take it.)

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

The increased prevalence is the result of Hollywood's desire for properties with existing name recognition running up against the increasing demand by audiences for diverse casts.

Correction: the perceived demand by audiences for diverse casts.

Sure, Jan

[clearspira]

The increased prevalence is the result of Hollywood's desire for properties with existing name recognition running up against the increasing demand by audiences for diverse casts.

Correction: the perceived demand by audiences for diverse casts.

Sure, Jan

Prove it, fam.

[clearspira]

The increased prevalence is the result of Hollywood's desire for properties with existing name recognition running up against the increasing demand by audiences for diverse casts.

Correction: the perceived demand by audiences for diverse casts.

The reason companies keep doing it despite the backlash from people online is that films with diverse casts consistently make more money than films with all white casts.

But is that correlation without causation? How do you prove that it was the diverse cast that sold this film and not literally any other factor?

[TGLS]

Enough articles to shake a well sized stick at.
Diverse Films Make More Money at the Box Office - Greater Good Magazine
Despite Dollars in Diversity, Hollywood Still Averse to Making Inclusive Films - Variety
New Study Finds Hollywood Studios Could Lose Money From Movies That Lack Diversity - Deadline
Redefining Hollywood: 'Diversity Makes More Money' - NPR
The profit in racially diverse movie casts - Deloitte
New Study Finds More Diverse Movies Make More Money - ScreenCrush
Diversity on screen equals bigger box office bucks, study finds - Reuters
Movies with Diverse Casts Make More Money, Study Says - Vice
Movies with more diverse casts also make more money at the box office, according to a study - Business Insider
Film Diversity is Needed - The Medium
Movies With Diverse Casts Make More Money - Money
New Study Shows Movies With Diverse Leads Are More Successful - Highsnobiety
Hollywood is Screwing Itself: Study Shows Movies Make More Money When Half the Cast Isn’t White - Complex
Opinion: This simple fact may explain why Hollywood films aren’t more diverse - MarketWatch

[Al-1701]

Yeah. Beware getting your information from Clownfish TV or Midnight's Edge.

[BBally81]

Yeah. Beware getting your information from Clownfish TV or Midnight's Edge.

I used to like Midnight Edge, especially when he talked about the questionable behind the scenes at Paramount and how they handled Star Trek but he really went down the anti-woke rabbit hole, so I stopped watching.