(11-18-2015, 06:10 AM)Graeham Wrote: It's also possible that some people are reading into it a little too much. The movie is being created to appeal to a general audience. Has stuff been watered down? Definitely! Though that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Again, it isn't trying to be anything other than an action movie with some loose connections to Egyptian mythology.
It's also hard to discuss this sort of thing in-depth because, ultimately, this is a site devoted to FFXIV and role-play. Complex socio-political issues are often tricky to debate because there's a lot of people with different opinions who come from completely different backgrounds and boast conflicting views.
There's countless examples of games, books and movies putting a creative spin on existing mythology and historical matters. Sometimes they reflect it as closely as possible. Other times liberties are taken - which, again, isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The movie will make some people cringe. Many others, however, will likely enjoy it.
It's not that tricky to debate, because we're actually doing it right now. Are people reading into it too much? That depends on who you ask. However, it's worth noting that the so-called "whitewashing" in Egypt is something that has been going on for decades, and is so effective that people think that this is what people in Egypt actually looked like. In fact, when my mother and her generation were growing up in the 50s and the 60s, they were literally being taught that Egypt was technically part of Europe because it bordered the Mediterranean.
So Egypt in particular has a very long history of being forcefully tied to Caucasian Civilization. The more that this is perpetuated, the more people are going to believe it, and the longer that they're going to believe it. So believe it or not, it actually is a serious issue to a great deal of people, especially those that have an ethnic tie to that civilization, or who study it profusely. To put it into perspective, people are being told that the greatest culture in their ethnicity (save for perhaps Mali, though no one really learns about that empire anyway) isn't even theirs. It would be like someone saying for decades that "oh, that Roman empire? Naaaah man, that wasn't a European empire, that was us Native Americans! We built that, dude. Now go home and drink some Ovaltine, bud."
To my knowledge, there is no other instance of the repeated erasure of a civilization in such a way, which is why this is an important issue. In fact, it could even be argued that the fact that you saw less of a problem with the "racial replacement" of one culture in a movie than with Egypt in the same circumstance is a testament to exactly how effective this is been (but it may also be confused for a personal attack, so I won't make it). This is something that's not only been done in movies, but in historical documentaries, textbooks, comics, and many, many other things.
It's a problem. And it's certainly not "watering down."
I personally challenge you to find an example of a game, book, or movie putting a creative spin on existing mythology or historical matters that takes extensive liberty with the replacing of a race by another that is not Caucasian. Single-person examples don't count; I want at least half a cast.
As an afterthought, it's also worth noting that more and more movies these days make most of their bank from the International box office, so I'm not sure how much credence the idea of "pandering to a wide audience" really has.
